Publish Date: May 15, 2018
304 Pages [Kindle edition]
Published by HMH Books for Young Readers
Synopsis:
For readers of Girl in Pieces and The Way I Used to Be comes an emotionally gripping story about facing hard truths in the aftermath of sexual assault.
Mara and Owen are as close as twins can get, so when Mara’s friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn't know what to think. Can her brother really be guilty of such a violent act? Torn between her family and her sense of right and wrong, Mara feels lost, and it doesn’t help that things are strained with her ex-girlfriend, Charlie. As Mara, Hannah, and Charlie come together in the aftermath of this terrible crime, Mara must face a trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits into her future. With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim blaming, and sexual assault.
My Thoughts:
I was gifted an ebook via Netgalley.
I cannot speak as to how accurate the representation in this book is...other than the anxiety/panic attack rep, but there is bisexual and gender fluid/queer representation in this book. I liked how Blake touched on subjects and I feel approached them in a real world way. They felt authentic. There was negative and positive in the representation, just as there was with the sexual assault and rape in the story. Not that Blake did right and wrong, but rather, in the story, characters respond to these themes in both negative and positive ways and I feel that is what made it feel authentic. I think the story and characters were very complex and fleshed out and I connected with them very easily. I connected with Mara and how she was pulled in 8 million different directions. I connected with every emotion she was feeling, even if I don't have a first person perspective of what she was actually going through. I read this book 7 months prior to its publication but I cannot wait to hear everyone talk about it. I think it is a very important book to have out there and hope that everyone loves it as much as I do. I docked a half star because I wasn't largely a fan of the ending and I felt that there wasn't closure to some things I would have liked closure to as a reader. I do think that Blake did that purposefully and it is 100% her prerogative to do so. It didn't upset me by any means, but I wish there would have been a teensy bit more.
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