Valentine

Wow. That's a gut punch. Raw, gritty, and profound. It made me feel l just read some Appalachian noir. Set in West Texas during the late seventies; a fourteen year old Hispanic teenager is brutally and horrifically raped and assaulted and it tears the small town of Odessa apart. For many of the Bible thumping, good ol' boy residents, that young boy (who works in the oil fields) is innocent until proven guilty. Besides she was asking for it! For Mary Rose the woman who found poor Gloria, bloodied and barefoot after crawling across the desert to escape the man who brutalized her, it's insane that anyone could place blame on the girl. She's only fourteen, she's a child! Told in alternating perspectives from different women in the town; this story will captivate, enrage, and haunt readers. Wonderful storytelling!

All the Things We Do in the Dark

The book opens with a trigger warning so you know exactly what you're getting into before you dive into the story. This young adult book covers: trauma, rape, murder, and PTSD to name a few. It's not for the faint of heart, but definitely worth reading if you can handle all that.

Ava has a past, something happened to her when she was a kid and she has the facial scar to prove it. The bad thing is that it isn't much of a secret. Everyone knows. But now she has a new secret. She found a body. An honest to goodness dead body. While the obvious response would be to call 911, she can't bear to. At least not yet. You would think finding a body would take priority, but Ava has a lot else going on in her life. Her friend is acting up, she's crushing on a girl, and her mother is being more protective than usual. What could possibly go wrong? Dark but worth the read!

All Is Not Forgotten

If I could have given this a 4.5 star rating I would have. It was soo close to being a 5 star, it truly was! The suspense and writing style had me hooked at the very get go and I powered through determined to find out the ending. A teenage girl is brutally raped and as a result of drinking and repressive therapy she remembers none of the attack. She knows she was assaulted but she can't remember any specific details which everyone seems to think will help her out in the long term. Unfortunately, it has the opposite affect and she just wishes she could remember it so her brain would stop trying so hard to put the pieces together. Told through the perspective of her therapist, this harrowing story is his piecing together what happened to her and his dark role in uncovering and possibly altering the truth. Wonderful. Loved it, wished their was more to the ending. It came to fast, I needed more!!!

Asking For It

Hands down the most brutal and honest look at teenage rape in our modern era of social media. Louise O'Neill does a great job bringing Emma to life, she's flawed and she's bitchy but was she really asking for it? Leading up to "the night," Emma is the most beloved, admired, and beautiful girl in her grade. She always turns heads and she can have any boy she wants. The night of the rape(s) becomes a turning point, the boys didn't mean it, they were her friends, but then the pictures showed up online and all her friends turn against. She shouldn't have been wearing that outfit. She shouldn't have drank that much. She shouldn't have been such a flirt. She becomes shamed and ostracized, she's ruining these poor boy's lives. The hate never ends and all she wants to do is disappear. The story is not sugar coated and the ending pulls a massive punch. So often we gloss over sexual violence, side with the young accused men, and shame the girls, but in literature there is somehow always a happy ending. This young adult novel tells the real heart-wrenching story.