Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
The book is so profoundly thought-provoking and different, it'll make you re-evaluate your life completely. It touches the issue of bullying, but is told from the point-of-view of a propagator. In a way it is reminiscent of all things in life that happen to all of us. Love, adultery, depression, peer-pressure, bad company, jealousy, unwise decisions, over assuming parents and the belief in one's pwn self good. A definitely must-read.
I'm giving this a four purely based on the writing. The story is also a good one, but I wouldn't say it's a feel-good kind of story. It's heartbreaking, really, and you're going to be super frustrated and irritated by the main character. But this book is necessary. It's common for us to read a book from the perspective of the tortured, but not from the bully. TEASE gives a great glimpse inside the bully's mind - who really doesn't see herself as such and often feels quite justified in her actions - and how that affects her moving forward after something terrible happens to the her target.
- - - - -
Vlog review on Rather Be Reading
Hello again, friends! I’m back with another vlog review, and –wow!– what a book Tease was. I’ve seen a bit of differing opinions about this one because author Amanda Maciel takes you (uncomfortably) inside the bully’s mind. As a reader, you’re going to want to wring Sara’s neck in hopes that she could see that she’s done wrong and made some major mistakes. Does that happen? You’ll just have to find out for yourself. But do know that you’ll feel frustrated with Sara. She thinks her actions are justified; she felt threatened by Emma and had a hard time standing up to her best friend, Brielle, when she suggested something particularly nasty to do/say to Emma because Sara felt like her friendship with Brielle was slipping away.
Simply stated: Tease is complicated. It’s a difficult read, but it’s very relative and important. Read it.
- - - - -
Vlog review on Rather Be Reading
Hello again, friends! I’m back with another vlog review, and –wow!– what a book Tease was. I’ve seen a bit of differing opinions about this one because author Amanda Maciel takes you (uncomfortably) inside the bully’s mind. As a reader, you’re going to want to wring Sara’s neck in hopes that she could see that she’s done wrong and made some major mistakes. Does that happen? You’ll just have to find out for yourself. But do know that you’ll feel frustrated with Sara. She thinks her actions are justified; she felt threatened by Emma and had a hard time standing up to her best friend, Brielle, when she suggested something particularly nasty to do/say to Emma because Sara felt like her friendship with Brielle was slipping away.
Simply stated: Tease is complicated. It’s a difficult read, but it’s very relative and important. Read it.
Good book even as a grown adult... I think girls going through high school should have to read this so they understand the consequences of being so mean.
This super made me think about how life is such a challenge. If someone knows you have a boyfriend, then deliberately steals him away from you, and you retaliate-- then who is wrong? If you repeatedly call this girl a slut and then she kills herself is it your fault? She did something deliberately wrong and so did you. Fatal and legal consequences. This was not the most well written or entertaining book but raised so many valid questions. Mostly it made me think about how wonderfully complicated life can be and how we should do right by the choices presented to us.
#PowerofaBook Not comfortable but realistic. It was like watching a trainwreck occur in slow motion. But powerful. The ending is just about right. Not too tidy, but hopeful - a change in tone from the rest of the book.
This review of Tease by Amanda Maciel may contain spoilers. I’m not certain I can fully express why I did not enjoy this book without saying a bit about the plot.
I had high hopes for this novel (maybe too high) when I saw it pop up in the blogosphere. What caught my eye were the descriptions about how it shows the bully’s side of the story and the cause and effect of the bullying actions after the person being bullied commits suicide. The book does cover that, in a sense, but I don’t feel the message is delivered effectively as I had hoped.
Sarah, the main character, is a tag-a-long. She’s not necessarily the main bully; at least I didn’t see her that way. One could argue that Sarah, herself, is being bullied by the toxic group of girls she chooses to hang out with. Sarah doesn’t quite fit in socially or economically with the gaggle of popular girls, she seems to become the scapegoat in the trial that follows Emma’s death. Her parents are divorced. She can’t afford the fancy lawyer. In my opinion, Sarah didn’t lead the majority of attacks and suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. Her strong need to have Brielle accept her, drives her to ignore what her conscience tells her almost every time she’s in a bad situation. She tries desperately to be a good friend with Brielle despite what she knows is wrong.
In the end, Sarah does realize that her participation has caused irreparable harm. The fact not all the bullies came to the same conclusion and because some of them had better lawyers than others, I feel Sarah paid a higher price in the courtroom, in the public’s eyes and especially emotionally. As a result, I was disappointed in how the story wrapped up. I understand that not everything is fair in life, but if this book was truly about the bullies coming to grips with how their actions caused Emma’s suicide, Brielle and the others would have paid a greater price.
I had high hopes for this novel (maybe too high) when I saw it pop up in the blogosphere. What caught my eye were the descriptions about how it shows the bully’s side of the story and the cause and effect of the bullying actions after the person being bullied commits suicide. The book does cover that, in a sense, but I don’t feel the message is delivered effectively as I had hoped.
Sarah, the main character, is a tag-a-long. She’s not necessarily the main bully; at least I didn’t see her that way. One could argue that Sarah, herself, is being bullied by the toxic group of girls she chooses to hang out with. Sarah doesn’t quite fit in socially or economically with the gaggle of popular girls, she seems to become the scapegoat in the trial that follows Emma’s death. Her parents are divorced. She can’t afford the fancy lawyer. In my opinion, Sarah didn’t lead the majority of attacks and suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. Her strong need to have Brielle accept her, drives her to ignore what her conscience tells her almost every time she’s in a bad situation. She tries desperately to be a good friend with Brielle despite what she knows is wrong.
In the end, Sarah does realize that her participation has caused irreparable harm. The fact not all the bullies came to the same conclusion and because some of them had better lawyers than others, I feel Sarah paid a higher price in the courtroom, in the public’s eyes and especially emotionally. As a result, I was disappointed in how the story wrapped up. I understand that not everything is fair in life, but if this book was truly about the bullies coming to grips with how their actions caused Emma’s suicide, Brielle and the others would have paid a greater price.
Great YA book on bullying but from a unique perspective.
4.5 stars
I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll start by saying that if you don’t want to read a book about an unlikable character don’t read this book. However, if you don’t read this book because of that I think you’re making a mistake. Sara is a bully, she feels pretty much no remorse, and that doesn’t change for most of the book. I mean, if it did there would kind of be no point to this story, but hearing this story from her perspective is so important that it shouldn’t be skipped simply because you wouldn’t want her to be your BFF. Basically if you read this book and then complain about what a rhymes-with-witch Sara is I think you’re missing the point.
In some of my other reviews I’ve talked about how bullying is a tough subject for me because I just don’t get it. I went to a bizarre middle school and high school where people pretty much minded there own business and, while there were mean girls, there wasn’t anything I would describe as bullying the way bullying is often depicted in books. Because of that I was worried about reading Tease, but from the beginning I liked the twist of the story being from the bully’s perspective rather than the bullying victim. In her author’s note Amanda Maciel mentions the 2010 case in South Hadley, MA where a girl killed herself and then six students were criminally charged with bullying her. This case was in the front of my mind while I was reading, I went to college in South Hadley, as did Maciel, and even though it happened three years after I graduated, it was a huge topic of discussion for me and my college friends.
Everyone hates a bully, right? But bullies are troubled people and I love that Maciel wanted to tell the story of a bully because obviously nothing is black and white. In a lot of ways Sara reminded me of the main character in Speechless, she’s certainly a bully, but she’s also mostly going along with her bossy, popular friend Brielle who is the ringleader. Sara is so insecure, her parents went through a bad divorce and although her mom tries she also works a lot, leaving Sara to take care of her younger brothers, and she doesn’t have anyone looking out for her or helping guide her through teenagerdom. The story is told in chapters alternating between the winter when Sara and Brielle bullied Emma and the fall when Sara, her lawyer, and her family are preparing for the trial. I did prefer the time in the present because I was so curious about how Sara would grow as a person and what would happen to her legal case, but the chapters set in the past were obviously incredibly important to show what happened and explain the present.
When I first started reading Tease I was surprised that Emma, the victim, wasn’t an outcast, or at least the typical outcast. She recently transferred to Sara and Brielle’s high school, but she was pretty and seemed like someone who could have been popular; I’m projecting my preconceived notions on the book, but I just expected her to be more of an outcast. What I’m going to say next is going to make me sound like a terrible human being: I had a difficult time feeling bad for Emma. What Sara and Brielle did to her was terrible and wrong, but Emma, at least in the version of the story told from Sara’s POV, was a girl who went after other girls’ boyfriends and that is just unforgivable to me. Since the story is told from Sara’s perspective I do question if Emma was as much of a boyfriend stealer as Sara believed, but she was at least somewhat.
The brilliant thing Maciel manages to do is create a story where the media version or the simplistic view would be to have “good” and “bad” guys, but life is rarely that easy and Maciel does an outstanding job of demonstrating that. Sara and Brielle should be the bad guys, but through the course of the story the insecurities that they’re both battling are revealed and it’s hard to truly demonize either girl. Emma, as the victim, isn’t completely innocent, either. She had problems at previous schools and was obviously going through a huge internal battle that sometimes manifested itself as being very flirty and promiscuous (which I don’t judge) which is what first caught Sara and Brielle’s eye.
While I was reading I kept thinking about how unfair the entire situation was. Obviously it’s unfair to Emma and her family, but it’s also unfair to Sara and Brielle. Although their behavior is inexcusable they also (at least in my opinion) didn’t want Emma to die. Maybe they would have said they wanted her dead, but even as 17-year-olds I don’t think were fully able to grasp the ramifications of their actions (and, with my psych 101 knowledge, I think there have to be other things going on in someone’s life for them to commit suicide). Plus, and this doesn’t make it right, but bullying isn’t usually an activity that can really make an impact with one or two people doing the bullying. Sara and Brielle may have started it, but their group of friends, and really the whole school, joined in, calling Emma names, defacing her locker, and posting and liking mean things about her online. It’s really easy to get swept up in a mob mentality, especially when you’re as insecure as Sara, and everyone at that school had something to do with what happened.
Bottom Line: Tease reminded me of other great books like Speechless, After, and Dangerous Girls, but it’s also uniquely its own story. Rather than making everyone fit into neat little boxes Amanda Maciel shows that there are good and bad sides to everyone and no situation is black and white. There’s something that Sara says at the end of the book that does such a great job of summing up the story that I’d love to quote here, but you’ll have to read Tease to find out what it is.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.
I don’t even know where to start. I guess I’ll start by saying that if you don’t want to read a book about an unlikable character don’t read this book. However, if you don’t read this book because of that I think you’re making a mistake. Sara is a bully, she feels pretty much no remorse, and that doesn’t change for most of the book. I mean, if it did there would kind of be no point to this story, but hearing this story from her perspective is so important that it shouldn’t be skipped simply because you wouldn’t want her to be your BFF. Basically if you read this book and then complain about what a rhymes-with-witch Sara is I think you’re missing the point.
In some of my other reviews I’ve talked about how bullying is a tough subject for me because I just don’t get it. I went to a bizarre middle school and high school where people pretty much minded there own business and, while there were mean girls, there wasn’t anything I would describe as bullying the way bullying is often depicted in books. Because of that I was worried about reading Tease, but from the beginning I liked the twist of the story being from the bully’s perspective rather than the bullying victim. In her author’s note Amanda Maciel mentions the 2010 case in South Hadley, MA where a girl killed herself and then six students were criminally charged with bullying her. This case was in the front of my mind while I was reading, I went to college in South Hadley, as did Maciel, and even though it happened three years after I graduated, it was a huge topic of discussion for me and my college friends.
Everyone hates a bully, right? But bullies are troubled people and I love that Maciel wanted to tell the story of a bully because obviously nothing is black and white. In a lot of ways Sara reminded me of the main character in Speechless, she’s certainly a bully, but she’s also mostly going along with her bossy, popular friend Brielle who is the ringleader. Sara is so insecure, her parents went through a bad divorce and although her mom tries she also works a lot, leaving Sara to take care of her younger brothers, and she doesn’t have anyone looking out for her or helping guide her through teenagerdom. The story is told in chapters alternating between the winter when Sara and Brielle bullied Emma and the fall when Sara, her lawyer, and her family are preparing for the trial. I did prefer the time in the present because I was so curious about how Sara would grow as a person and what would happen to her legal case, but the chapters set in the past were obviously incredibly important to show what happened and explain the present.
When I first started reading Tease I was surprised that Emma, the victim, wasn’t an outcast, or at least the typical outcast. She recently transferred to Sara and Brielle’s high school, but she was pretty and seemed like someone who could have been popular; I’m projecting my preconceived notions on the book, but I just expected her to be more of an outcast. What I’m going to say next is going to make me sound like a terrible human being: I had a difficult time feeling bad for Emma. What Sara and Brielle did to her was terrible and wrong, but Emma, at least in the version of the story told from Sara’s POV, was a girl who went after other girls’ boyfriends and that is just unforgivable to me. Since the story is told from Sara’s perspective I do question if Emma was as much of a boyfriend stealer as Sara believed, but she was at least somewhat.
The brilliant thing Maciel manages to do is create a story where the media version or the simplistic view would be to have “good” and “bad” guys, but life is rarely that easy and Maciel does an outstanding job of demonstrating that. Sara and Brielle should be the bad guys, but through the course of the story the insecurities that they’re both battling are revealed and it’s hard to truly demonize either girl. Emma, as the victim, isn’t completely innocent, either. She had problems at previous schools and was obviously going through a huge internal battle that sometimes manifested itself as being very flirty and promiscuous (which I don’t judge) which is what first caught Sara and Brielle’s eye.
While I was reading I kept thinking about how unfair the entire situation was. Obviously it’s unfair to Emma and her family, but it’s also unfair to Sara and Brielle. Although their behavior is inexcusable they also (at least in my opinion) didn’t want Emma to die. Maybe they would have said they wanted her dead, but even as 17-year-olds I don’t think were fully able to grasp the ramifications of their actions (and, with my psych 101 knowledge, I think there have to be other things going on in someone’s life for them to commit suicide). Plus, and this doesn’t make it right, but bullying isn’t usually an activity that can really make an impact with one or two people doing the bullying. Sara and Brielle may have started it, but their group of friends, and really the whole school, joined in, calling Emma names, defacing her locker, and posting and liking mean things about her online. It’s really easy to get swept up in a mob mentality, especially when you’re as insecure as Sara, and everyone at that school had something to do with what happened.
Bottom Line: Tease reminded me of other great books like Speechless, After, and Dangerous Girls, but it’s also uniquely its own story. Rather than making everyone fit into neat little boxes Amanda Maciel shows that there are good and bad sides to everyone and no situation is black and white. There’s something that Sara says at the end of the book that does such a great job of summing up the story that I’d love to quote here, but you’ll have to read Tease to find out what it is.
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss (thank you!). All opinions are my own.
This review first appeared on my blog.
This was an eye-opening story about the bully’s point of view. There was depth to Sara’s character and you will definitely feel for her at points. I had to knock off a star because I found Sara’s obsession with Dylan very annoying.