Yes, Daddy - Jonathan Parks-Ramage
A review of Jonathan Parks-Ramage’s novel examining abuse, power and the limits of intensity as a substitute for precision.
293 pages · Kindle edition · May 2021
A serious book with serious intentions. That does not make it a strong one.
The good
The novel steadies when it finally slows down. The closing chapters with Jonah’s father show restraint and proportion. They avoid spectacle and settle for presence. Mace’s letter brings the clearest moral line in the book. Forgiveness is optional. Trauma explains behaviour but does not erase responsibility. These sections trust silence and scale, and they work.
The bad
For much of its length, the book relies on repetition rather than insight. Abuse and power imbalance are identified early, then replayed at higher volume without being pushed further. Once the Hamptons storyline slips into thriller mode, interior life thins out. Momentum replaces thought. The media backlash reads as familiar terrain, registered rather than examined.
The ugly
The conversion-to-Jesus arc is the novel’s weakest turn. It swaps one system of control for another, then rushes past its own implications. Sexual harm inside the church becomes another escalation beat, not a reckoning. Jonah’s complicity is acknowledged, then repeatedly softened by circumstance. Accountability arrives late and without much force.
Verdict
Yes, Daddy engages urgent material and occasionally handles it well. For long stretches, it confuses intensity with precision and insists on significance it has not earned. I finished it aware of what it wanted to say, unconvinced by how it said it, and largely unmoved.