From: From Love, The Letters
To: Reader
Re: Book Title – Author
Delivery: Priority Mail
Dear Readers,
This book asks you to sit in someone’s pain for hundreds of pages and trust that there is something worth finding on the other side.
Selfish by Katura B was one of those books for me.
Was this was an easy read?I n fact, it was quite the opposite.
From the very beginning, I found myself deeply sympathetic to Sundae. Her life was marked by loss, trauma, abandonment, and betrayal by the very people who should have protected her. Watching her navigate life after the death of her father while enduring the devastating consequences of her mother’s addiction was heartbreaking. What affected me most was not the addiction itself, but the way it stripped away a mother’s responsibility to protect her child.
Reading about Sundae being used as a pawn because of her mother’s addiction was sickening. There were moments that were difficult to get through, not because they were poorly written, but because they felt painfully real. The themes of sexual assault, molestation, and addiction are woven deeply into this story, and readers should absolutely be aware of that before picking it up. This is not a light read. It has the potential to reopen wounds for readers who have experienced similar trauma.
Yet despite everything stacked against her, Sundae continued to move forward.
Friends turned against her. The men in her life were not always the right men. Her younger sister followed a path that echoed their mother’s destructive choices. Again and again, life knocked Sundae down. And again and again, she found a way to stand back up.
That resilience became the heart of the story for me.
I also loved Onyx. Both he and Sundae carried wounds from their childhoods, but together they represented something many trauma survivors desperately need to see: healing is possible. Not perfect healing. Not overnight healing. But intentional healing. Their decision to seek counseling together was one of the most powerful choices in the book because it acknowledged that love alone cannot fix everything. Sometimes healing requires help.
One thing I found myself wanting, however, was more perspective. Katura B did an incredible job telling Sundae’s story through Sundae’s eyes, but I often wondered what was happening inside the minds of the other characters. I would have loved chapters from her mother’s perspective or her sister’s perspective. Not because it would excuse their actions, but because it might have added another layer to an already complex story.
At its core, Selfish felt like a reminder that we do not get to choose the cards we are dealt in life. What matters is how we play the hand we’re given. Sundae was dealt a terrible one, yet she refused to let it define her future.
Am I glad I read it? Absolutely.
Would I read it again? Probably not.
Some stories stay with you because they are beautiful. Others stay with you because they hurt. Selfish falls into the second category for me. Much like the moviePrecious, it is a story I respect, a story I am glad I experienced, and a story I do not feel the need to revisit.
But Sundae’s strength? That is something I will remember for a long time.
From Love,
The Letters
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