Megan Stockton's Pink Neon is a masterpiece of beautiful depravity.
At the center of this chaos is Tansi, a sex worker with a good heart navigating a world that's anything but. Stockton's character work is on full display here—creating characters so achingly human it's impossible not to want to scoop them up in a protective hug so they can get out of his disgusting life. Unfortunately, Stockton wants to hurt us, so she causes them as much pain as possible. At least until they start taking matters into their own hands. Tansi tries to maintain her humanity until she can't, letting parts of herself get swallowed up by something dark and festering, a growing need to get back at all the shitty people who wronged her.
Let's get one thing clear, Pink Neon is going to fuck you up. Some scenes will make your stomach turn, and there are moments where you'll have to set the book down and walk away just to process what you've read. And I'm not even talking about the vivid descriptions of fingers being shoved into the recently cut throat of a deadbeat dude as his trachea clenches in a last-ditch effort to breathe. Even though the gore and carnage are visceral - seriously, there's one scene I'll never be able to bleach out of my brain, it's the emotional toil that sticks with you. The pain of wanting so badly for specific characters to escape only for them to get lost in the underbelly of this grim city and the monsters who inhabit it.
But just because Stockton doesn't flinch from ugliness doesn't mean there isn't a deeper story here. Part of what makes her writing so compelling is that beneath the blood, viscera, and guts, there's a complex narrative about autonomy and vengeance and taking back power from a world that sees you as discardable trash.
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