Review by goosemixtapes - Dare Me

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goosemixtapes 's review for:

Dare Me by Megan Abbott

5.0

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

okay it’s 2am i feel fucking crazy i was gonna save my review of this for tomorrow when i'm awaker but i'm just sitting here, insane, feeling like i need to write a thesis about this book and specifically what it’s doing with heterosexuality and the ever-present never-spoken specter of lesbianism

If it hadn't been what it was, it would have been beautiful.

this book like. snagged me and then pulled me behind a car. does the writing sometimes shade into purple prose? yes. but that doesn't matter. because most of the time it's knife-sharp and it goes down so fast and the entire experience is addicting. like, i'm going to have to watch the netflix series now, and trying to get me to watch TV is like pulling teeth blindfolded. i feel like i could reread this book again, tomorrow, and love it even more.

There's something dangerous about the boredom of teenage girls.

calling this “fight club for women” feels dismissive, because calling anything “X for women” 99% of the time makes me want to bite. but in this case, i really do think the comparison is apt, because fight club is about the violent homoerotic ugliness of manhood, and dare me is about the violent homoerotic ugliness of teenage girlhood. not just stereotypical teenage girlhood (the backstabbing, the gossip, the eating disorders, although that’s all present), but like. girlhood as a constant teetering on the edge of something (womanhood? catastrophe?). girlhood as a being desired and a desiring something, but emptily, in ways that make you feel unpersoned. girlhood and innocence and the question of who gets to own innocence. girlhood and going ignored. girlhood and not wanting to be ignored. and girlhood and heterosexuality, and the pain and emptiness and ennui of the perfect suburban life, and yet the inability to even let yourself look beyond it or want something different. this book does absence SO well, guys. the things that float unspoken--beth's mother, addy's parents, the casey thing, hell, addy herself is so often a blankness with something dark humming underneath. i don't think anyone ever says the word lesbian in this book. only dyke.

beth cassidy is one of the characters of all fucking time. beth cassidy i am bonkers insane about you. i feel like i need to read this entire book over again now that i understand her just so that her scenes will feel even more like i'm bleeding from all orifices. i think the ending might be polarizing and to be fair i don't know how i feel about the very last chapter but i am staggered by the build to that climactic scene. it's not often that i feel a sense of physical heaviness as the story breaknecks forth to the inevitable. i also think i am maybe going to be thinking about the coach/addy/beth triangle forever. there's something There in the scene with prine and beth versus the quieter, more ongoing grooming of addy by coach. would you believe me if i told you this book is a love story

🎵 Smells Like Teen Spirit (Malia J cover)

Content Warnings