Scan barcode
finesilkflower's review against another edition
4.0
Despite their sensationalistic titles and blurbs, I've found Marilyn Reynolds' "True to Life" series to be sensitive, nuanced, and frank. Her candidness about taboo topics is clearly meant to shine a light on issues which are really part of teens' lives and which are made worse by secrecy.
This is especially true here, in her portrayal of a twelve-year-old girl struggling with her feelings of confusion and shame after she is sexually assaulted by a neighbor. Cassie's voice feels realistic and age-appropriate. Reynolds shows how Cassie's feelings are exacerbated by outside issues such as unrelated conflicts with her parents, lack of information about sex, body image issues, and self-doubt.
I especially like how Reynolds takes us past the moments of high drama and shows us the emotional aftermath and the characters putting the pieces of their lives back together. There's no quick fix or easy answers. It would have been simpler to write a book about covering up a secret that ends with the secret is out. But the "Telling" happens about a third of the way through the book; from there on, Cassie deals with the aftermath of telling, such as being disbelieved, feeling different in the eyes of her parents, deciding whether to go to law enforcement, and engaging in therapy.
Takes that haven't aged well: Cassie decides that a good way to take her mind off things is to watch a funny movie, so she watched Sleeper by W**dy A**en. When I first read this, I assumed it was written before the director's sexual abuse allegations against a child were known, but I see now that it was written in 1996, four years later. I wonder if Reynold's choice of movie was an intentional comment on the impossibility of escaping sexually abusive men, even when looking for relief and escape; if so, she does not acknowledge this in the text. It's possible that these allegations were not widely known at the time; I remember knowing that A**en had married his own stepdaughter, and finding that creepy, but not knowing about the child abuse allegations. That said, I was only a child myself at the time, so I'm not sure what adults knew at that time and what was being deliberately hidden from me. I wish his whole oeuvre had been deliberately hidden from me.
This is especially true here, in her portrayal of a twelve-year-old girl struggling with her feelings of confusion and shame after she is sexually assaulted by a neighbor. Cassie's voice feels realistic and age-appropriate. Reynolds shows how Cassie's feelings are exacerbated by outside issues such as unrelated conflicts with her parents, lack of information about sex, body image issues, and self-doubt.
I especially like how Reynolds takes us past the moments of high drama and shows us the emotional aftermath and the characters putting the pieces of their lives back together. There's no quick fix or easy answers. It would have been simpler to write a book about covering up a secret that ends with the secret is out. But the "Telling" happens about a third of the way through the book; from there on, Cassie deals with the aftermath of telling, such as being disbelieved, feeling different in the eyes of her parents, deciding whether to go to law enforcement, and engaging in therapy.
Takes that haven't aged well: Cassie decides that a good way to take her mind off things is to watch a funny movie, so she watched Sleeper by W**dy A**en. When I first read this, I assumed it was written before the director's sexual abuse allegations against a child were known, but I see now that it was written in 1996, four years later. I wonder if Reynold's choice of movie was an intentional comment on the impossibility of escaping sexually abusive men, even when looking for relief and escape; if so, she does not acknowledge this in the text. It's possible that these allegations were not widely known at the time; I remember knowing that A**en had married his own stepdaughter, and finding that creepy, but not knowing about the child abuse allegations. That said, I was only a child myself at the time, so I'm not sure what adults knew at that time and what was being deliberately hidden from me. I wish his whole oeuvre had been deliberately hidden from me.
More...