Reviews

Du wolltest es doch by Louise O'Neill

Only show reviews with written explanations

fantasynovel's review against another edition

4.0

CW for sexual assault

I've been thinking about this book a lot, and I'm removing a star bc it didn't do enough to show that even "small" rape is still ... rape. Before all the "bad stuff" happens, the main character is already raped. It's very fast; she says "I want to go back to the party" but she's really drunk and the boy she's with doesn't listen to her. And this is never revisited as rape. It's all about what happens later that night, when she's raped by four boys while unconscious. While this is clearly a terrible, terrible thing, it makes it seem like saying no while you're drunk isn't enough to make a "real" rape. You have to be unconscious, brutally assaulted, and then peed on for it to count. Idk if this makes any sense, it's just what I was thinking about.

teokajlibroj's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

An absolutely fantastic book. It is a very powerful read that stays in your mind for a long time after. The main theme is rape and how a small Irish town responds to it. But the characters are not black-and-white, and the main character is a bit of a bitch at first and then a complete wreck after. What struck me most was how realistic the book was. Although it is fiction, most of the events did happen somewhere and there are many references that give it a uniquely Irish feel. Although a lot of discussion about rape culture comes from America, this is a very Irish novel. There is no uplifting Hollywood ending and the main character never fights the system. She just wants to be an ordinary girl.

I highly recommend it.

katykelly's review against another edition

Go to review page

5.0

A Mean Girl's story... How would you feel if the popular but not-very-nice girl had something pretty horrific happen to her?

O'Neill's debut - Only Ever Yours - was one of the most stunningly original and powerful Young Adult books I've ever read. I can see the continuing theme of women, power and powerlessness carried on in her second book, which is just as thought-provoking (and might I say a huge 'well done' to the creator of the covers of both, just perfect , and beautifully co-ordinated).

Set in Ireland, Emma O'Donovan is beautiful, popular and doing well in the months before her exams. We can see she's perhaps not the nicest of people - cruel to her 'friends', a tease with boys, worshipped at home and school, she's top of the pile. Until one party...

Unable to remember anything the next morning, social media tells the story all too clearly. Or does it?

The novel tells the tale of Emma's plummet from the heights of popularity, we see the reactions around her as family, school, the media take sides. What did she do? Was it her fault? And what SHOULD she do?

Do we want to gloat that the mean b!t@h got taken down a peg? Is it that simple? Emma's perspective shows us it really isn't.

Emma is a very well-drawn character. You have little sympathy for her at the start, though the way males around her treat girls, and how she deals with this began to soften my feelings. Post-party, there's a huge shift in loyalties and sympathies, and Emma represents more than just one accuser, she is all teenage girls and women who have to fight for their rights against their community feelings, the media, who see what they want to see.

Deliberately vague? Sorry, it's a better read if you go into it not knowing what happens.

This isn't a book you 'enjoy' but it is one you won't forget, one you'll race to the end of to find out what happens. With Only Ever Yours I felt shocked and so, so sad at the end. Asking For It dredged up similar feelings, though Emma's story is not at an end.

O'Neill seems determined to make a point about young women. I would suggest that this is a book (alongside its predecessor) that is used in GCSE (or A-Level) classes to stimulate discussion with both genders - I want boys to think about how they treat girls, and girls to consider how they expect to be treated and why.

To say this 'makes a good point' is an understatement. It's powerful, explicit on more than one occasion (parental advisory: not for primary-aged readers) and very, very important.

Review of a Lovereading.co.uk advance copy.

raspberryicedtea's review

Go to review page

5.0

Ganz ehrlich? Ich hatte ein wenig Angst vor dem, was mich erwarten würde, als ich das Buch begonnen habe.
Aber es ist so ein wichtiges Thema, dass ich es doch gewagt habe und ich bereue es nicht.

VORSICHT TW! R*PE.

Emma war... keine Figur die man besonders mag. Sie ist egoistisch, oberflächlich und hat auch keine Gewissensbisse wenn sie mal ihre Freundinnen beklaut. Sie ist wunderschön und weiß das auch, sie steht gerne im Mittelpunkt und will mit allen Mitteln die Beliebteste sein.
Als sie bei einer Party von einer Gruppe Jungen vergewaltigt wird, sagen viele Leute sie hätte es ja so gewollt, das Kleid sei so kurz gewesen, was hätte sie denn erwartet?
Aber gerade der Punkt, dass man Emma nicht sympatisch findet ist extrem wichtig, weil er deutlich macht: Sie ist nicht die Schuldige! Sie ist das Opfer, allein die Täter sind verantwortlich.
Das Ende... war unbefriedigend, allerdings doch besser als ein "Happy End", wenn es so etwas bei dieser Geschichte überhaupt geben kann. Mir wäre eine andere Entscheidung lieber gewesen, ich kann Emma aber auch verstehen. Es ist wichtig zu begreifen, dass ihre Entscheidung nicht falsch war. Es ist ihre Entscheidung, das muss akzeptiert werden.

Ich empfehle das Buch auf jeden Fall weiter, ich glaube das Thema wird viel zu wenig behandelt.

joana_stormblessed's review against another edition

Go to review page

4.0

This book was so very important and I found myself unable to put it down.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR: SEXUAL ASSAULT, RAPE, RAPE CULTURE, SLUT SHAMING

I had never heard about this book as it is not wildly popular on BookTube or even Bookterner (to my knowledge at least). I went to my local bookstore to pick up another book and the girl who works there and I have become friends over the years. We always chat about the newest releases and what we are reading. That day she was hosting an event for teachers and she was presenting this book alongside 3 others. When I entered the store she was reading it and as she explained what it was about, I bought it immeditaley.

Then I kind of forgot about it as I went about reading other books and on Thursday night I don't know why, but this book popped into my head and I thought "it's now! otherwise you might end up not picking it up for a long time."

And boy oh boy am I glad I read this book.

What is it about ?

We follow 18-year old Emma O'Donnovan as she is Queen B in her high school in Ireland. She is Baliantoom's most popular and beautiful girl. She has three other best friends Jamie, Ali and Maggie and the four girls form the popular clique with Emma being its leader. Even the girls in the group are sometimes more of followers than friends per se. Because of her looks, Emma is wildly popular amongst boys. She knows this and likes to play with her popularity. She likes to tease the boys.
To be honest, you could consider Emma being a promiscuous girl and a bi***y friend. One of her best friends has had this crush on a boy for the longest time and he is clearly interested in Emma. When people ask her about it she says she would never do anything with him because of her friend. Then to the reader she confesses that she actually would, if the boy was popular and sought after by multiple girls.
Emma dresses in slutty clothes and uses her body to lure a lot of boys to sleep with her.
One evening the girls all go to a party and they drink too much and Emma even takes some drugs. First, she sleeps with a boy and gives her consent to it, but after that she cannot remember anything.
The next Monday she goes to school and realizes that everyone is mocking her and that she has lost the Queen B status. As she checks her Facebook she realizes why: at the party, she had intercourse with 4 guys and extremely humiliating pictures of her a plastered all over the Internet. But in the pictures Emma is unconscious and she cannot remember anything that happened.

What I thought:

This book made me think and it made me feel uncomfortable. When I have read books about rape and rape culture in the past it was always pretty clear-cut cases where the girl was conscious, she didn't give consent and she was raped. She was also a girl with a sexual background that wouldn't raise any questions whatsoever.
Here it is completely different. Before the assault, we see Emma as a promiscuous girl who shoes off her body on purpose. She goes to parties and kisses her best friends to sexually arouse boys and to sleep with many of them. She has had multiple sexual partners, she drinks too much and she is not the "innocent girl" that her parents thought her to be. Therein lies the complexity of this novel and it discusses the fact that women who file complaints for rape are not taken seriously unless they are pious and dress "modestly." In the book it is often discussed that she was known for being promiscuous and the she most likely wanted what happened anyway.

This book was so important because the themes it raised! I think this is an important book for teenagers to read in schools because it would raise important discussions. It is not because a girl is drunk and because she usually doesn't have qualms about sleeping with boys that it is okay for 4 guys (who were her friends) to assume that it is okay to take advantage of her. Especially not if she is unconscious. Rape is rape. No is no. And if she couldn't say no, then she didn't give her consent either.

It is important because it raises the problem of slut-shaming as all of Emma's friends left her after the attack. She was alone and got multiple hate messages and was dragged through mud for what was done to her.

Another very important point it raises is social media and privacy in our lives. The thing that bothered me so much was that those boys did really humiliating and DISGUSTING things to her and felt okay posting it online. They were bragging about it and there IS NO CONSEQUENCE to that. Everyone just slut-shames Emma who is knocked out on the bed and insult her in ways that cannot be described. How is nothing done in these cases? How can people think it is okay to look at those images, to like those photos and to comment? How did no one stand beside her even if it is just for the fact that this was done to her (and the rape in itself).

The last thing that bothered me were Emma's parents. They are not supportive of her because they live in this superficial world and they just keep on wishing nothing had happened and that they can be best friends again with the parents of the perpetrators. This infuriated me!

All in all, this book made me angry and sad and left me horrified at what people can do. And that is why I liked it so much. This book was simply important and I am so glad that I read it because I want to be able to catch myself if I ever think "she was asking for it."

bluemchen_reads's review

Go to review page

3.0

Meine Meinung

Ich hatte das Buch schon oft auf Instagram und Facebook gesehen und bin dadurch neugierig geworden.

Zusammen mit Angelika von bookxobsession von haben wir uns entschieden das Buch zu lesen.

Durch das ernste Thema war ich auf die Geschichte gespannt. Das Cover hat mir gut gefallen und passt zur Geschichte.

Die Kapitel waren mir persönlich zu lang, mir hätten sie kürzer besser gefallen, da sie dadurch teilweise langatmig wurden. Leider hatte ich auch mit dem Schreibstil gerade am Anfang so meine Probleme.

Ich fand es anstrengend und verwirrend in die Geschichte rein zu kommen. Gerade am Anfang, hätte ich mir gewünscht, dass man eine kurze Beschreibung der Charaktere bekommt, in der erklärt wird, wer, wer ist und wer in welcher Beziehung zueinander steht.

Leider war gerade Emma als Hauptcharakter mir durch die ganze Geschichte hinweg unsympathisch. Sie hat immer mit Dingen angegeben, wo man das Gefühlt hatte, sie stimmen nicht. Auch ihre Freunde waren ihr nur wichtig, wenn sie für ihr Image nützlich waren.

Sie wollte immer im Mittelpunkt stehen, egal wie. Trotzdem hat sie mir auch ein bisschen leidgetan, da mir ihre Familie mir sehr kühl vorkam.

Nur ihr Bruder ist immer für sie da.

Um dies zu vertuschen, verrsteckt sie sich hinter ihrer zickigen Fassade.

Sie ist auf jeder Party und schlägt dabei oft auch über die Stränge. Dabei sind für sie Alkohol und Drogen Normalität. Gerade bei Jungs ist sie inzwischen in Verruf geraten. Denn sie „ nimmt „ sich was sie möchte, selbst wenn es der Junge ist, in den ihre beste Freundin schon ewig verliebt ist.

Doch dieses Mal ist es anders. Der Alkohol ist wieder nicht genug und sie verschwindet mit einem Jungen im Schlafzimmer.

Als sie am nächsten Morgen mit starkem einem Sonnenbrand vor ihrer Haustür aufwacht hat sie nur noch Bruchstückhafte Erinnerungen.

War nur ein Junge im Zimmer?

War es freiwillig?

Und woher kommen die Bilder im Netz?

Den sie wollte es Doch?

Ich persönlich konnte Emmas Reaktionen, ehrlich gesagt nicht nachvollziehen.

Das Ende war für mich ein bisschen merkwürdig ,aber da Louise O'Neill das im Nachwort erklärt , habe ich anders darüber gedacht.

Bewertung

Ich finde das Thema über das Louise O'Neill die Geschichte geschrieben hat ist wichtig.

Denn nur weil ein Mädchen hat ein kurzes Kleid, einen etwas tieferen Ausschnitt oder an/betrunken ist, gibt das NIEMANDEM das Recht sie anzufassen oder zu begrabschen.

Ja vielleicht hat Emma es teilweise etwas provoziert, aber auch sie ist nicht „Freiwild“.

Und dann noch Fotos davon ins Netz zu stellen, geht gar nicht.

Ja, auch Emma hat Fehler gemacht, aber diese Erniedrigung hat niemand verdient. Ich fand die Geschichte teilweise wirklich schockierend und traurig.

Denn in ihrer Familie und ihrem Freundeskreis geht es nur ums Image, nicht wer man wirklich ist oder wie man sein möchte. Ich denke Emma macht viele Dinge um dazu zu gehören, egal um welchen Preis und das hat mich persönlich traurig gemacht. Damit es wenigsten so wirkt als wäre sie glücklich und hätte alles was sie sich wünscht.

Ich mochte das Buch zwar insgesamt nicht so sehr, aber meiner Meinung nach ist das Geschmackssache, trotzdem ist es ein sehr, sehr wichtiges Thema ,bei dem viel zu oft weg geschaut oder den Opfern leider nicht geglaubt wird.

Das Buch bekommt von mir 3 Sterne.