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A review by alyce6d980
Fault Line by Christa Desir
2.0
'I thought Ani could be fixed. The pieces of her recemented so everything could be how it was. How we were. Until I saw her on her knees in front of Mr Pinter, his fingers clenched around her ponytail.'
The first sentence automatically got me riled up: I hate books about people trying to fix their girlfriends, it's gross. But the rest of the paragraph shows Christa Desir pulls no punches with her writing, even if it does seem a bit too 'shock factor' for an opening.
It's love at first sight for Ben "Beez" Baptiste and Annika, the new girl in town. He meets her once and starts obsessing about whether he's going to see her at school and if they'll have any classes together, and after two conversations she's inviting him home to meet her mother.
Their relationship starts after they've known each other for a couple of weeks and progresses rather quickly: it's less than two months before Ani tells Ben she loves him, and he - delighted that she's said it first - texts her back proclaiming that he loves her too.
Everything is going smoothly, until Ani goes with her friend Kate to an out of town party. Ben decides not to go with them: he doesn't really know anyone else attending, and he hates the kind of music that they'll be listening to, so it doesn't appeal to him.
He's meant to be meeting Ani the next day, and he's been waiting for hours for her to contact him when he gets a call from Kate, telling him he needs to get to the hospital. Ani was sexually assaulted at the party after her drink was spiked with date rape drugs, and one of her attackers left a lighter inside of her.
News travels quickly, because a couple of other students from their school were at the party. Ben goes crazy and attacks a guy who called Ani "Firecrotch", getting himself suspended, but Ani decides to become what everyone obviously thinks she is. Within a couple of weeks she's fooling around with the majority of the guys in school, including the faculty, despite the fact that her and Ben are still in a relationship.
There's this horrible trope in YA where a teenage girl gets raped and she automatically wants to get back on the horse, throwing herself at any boy who will look at her. I've noticed it a couple of times in the past, but it's most horrendously used in this instance. We're reading from the perspective of someone who knows the victim, and not the victim herself, and Ben uses judgmental language consistently (e.g. "slut" and "whore") even thinking of Ani with the clever nickname the bullies have crafted - "the Manhole". It sickens me.
There just doesn't seem to be any real emotion, or sympathy, throughout this novel.
Read the rest of my review here!
The first sentence automatically got me riled up: I hate books about people trying to fix their girlfriends, it's gross. But the rest of the paragraph shows Christa Desir pulls no punches with her writing, even if it does seem a bit too 'shock factor' for an opening.
It's love at first sight for Ben "Beez" Baptiste and Annika, the new girl in town. He meets her once and starts obsessing about whether he's going to see her at school and if they'll have any classes together, and after two conversations she's inviting him home to meet her mother.
Their relationship starts after they've known each other for a couple of weeks and progresses rather quickly: it's less than two months before Ani tells Ben she loves him, and he - delighted that she's said it first - texts her back proclaiming that he loves her too.
Everything is going smoothly, until Ani goes with her friend Kate to an out of town party. Ben decides not to go with them: he doesn't really know anyone else attending, and he hates the kind of music that they'll be listening to, so it doesn't appeal to him.
He's meant to be meeting Ani the next day, and he's been waiting for hours for her to contact him when he gets a call from Kate, telling him he needs to get to the hospital. Ani was sexually assaulted at the party after her drink was spiked with date rape drugs, and one of her attackers left a lighter inside of her.
News travels quickly, because a couple of other students from their school were at the party. Ben goes crazy and attacks a guy who called Ani "Firecrotch", getting himself suspended, but Ani decides to become what everyone obviously thinks she is. Within a couple of weeks she's fooling around with the majority of the guys in school, including the faculty, despite the fact that her and Ben are still in a relationship.
There's this horrible trope in YA where a teenage girl gets raped and she automatically wants to get back on the horse, throwing herself at any boy who will look at her. I've noticed it a couple of times in the past, but it's most horrendously used in this instance. We're reading from the perspective of someone who knows the victim, and not the victim herself, and Ben uses judgmental language consistently (e.g. "slut" and "whore") even thinking of Ani with the clever nickname the bullies have crafted - "the Manhole". It sickens me.
There just doesn't seem to be any real emotion, or sympathy, throughout this novel.
Read the rest of my review here!