Trigger Warning: This book deals with topics of sexual assault, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, foster care abuse, and being arrested.
This book starts off so strong, but I felt like it fell apart a bit by the middle just to come back together at the very end. I enjoyed reading about Victoria as a character and seeing how she dealt with/began to overcome the trauma she had gone through. What bothered me were the stories of some of the side characters, plus the relationship drama that also occurred in this novel.
Victoria has gone through so much throughout this novel. She is still dealing with her mixed feelings due to her father’s gaslighting about the event that she went through. The entire book shows how she isn’t really receiving help for what she’s gone through while trying to continue with her life. Having your entire world flipped upside down in the middle of your senior year of high school can be devastating, as you want to focus on applying to college but now have even larger things to worry about.
Victoria’s life in the foster home was very sad to read about. The girls living in that home were under the iron fist of Connie. Connie never seems to directly lay a hand on these girls, but they do not have a happy life in her home. She also treats her biological daughter a lot better than she treats the other girls. Connie was painted to be a monster for the majority of the book, even though she provided Victoria with a place to stay. And I agreed with this definition of Connie. There were girls in her home going through unimaginable pain, and she wasn’t giving them the support that they needed. But this meant that I could give less of a crap about her backstory. I wanted to spend the least amount of time with her as I could. So when her character starts to develop, I felt conflicted. She did the things she had done in the beginning of the novel and she could never take those things back. Those things she did had consequences, and I feel like those consequences never came to fruition. I feel like I was supposed to at least want to tolerate her by the end of the novel, but I didn’t. This was what probably bothered me the most about the book.
Victoria’s friends in high school were truly the saving grace of the novel for me. They stayed friends from a distance and didn’t push her into telling them too much when they had just met her. But they still were by her side when she needed them to be, supporting her through this difficult year. I feel like this should have been the focus of the novel, her relationship with her friends. I feel like the boy she liked should not have really been in the equation that much for this novel. Victoria had so much trauma and PTSD related to intimacy that trying to be in a relationship would truly be too much for her to handle, and I feel like the boyfriend wouldn’t have been realistic. Her friends could have the same righteous anger for her against her father’s actions just like a boyfriend could.
This novel’s focus was telling a story about a girl who is attempting to overcome her circumstances. I feel like it did a good job of doing so. It did a good job of showing how if you are hurting yourself that you may overlook things around you. You may not be able to help others until you begin to admit what happened to yourself and help yourself begin to heal in that way.
I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.
Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 books.
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