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A review by electraheart
Fury by Shirley Marr
2.0
I feel like I read a completely different book than everyone else. Truthfully, there just wasn't much for me to enjoy here. The premise of the book is that the main character is admitting to murder, but it takes more than half the book to even understand why she did what she did, and it isn't until the last few pages that we see what actually happened. Most of this book is dramatic high school girls fighting with each other, arguing about who controls their group, who is allowed to be friends with them, etc. It's exhausting, and probably doesn't help that I just read a book with a similar problem.
If the story had been told from a different perspective, I might have enjoyed it more. Eliza is an insufferable rich teenager, a girl who has an attitude and problems with authority. She's selfish, and it's extremely easy to dislike her, especially when she brags about how much of a monster she is. She praises herself for being cruel, going as far as to chalk up her experience to, "I'm a murderer." There's nothing glorifying about killing someone, and even though the person who died deserved some kind of repercussions for their actions, it says a lot that these girls jumped to death as an solution to their problem, especially when they never once give off the vibe that they're capable of such. Maybe that's the problem here - there are real life issues in this book, and they need to be talked about, but this was the completely wrong way to go about them. The actions of the girls in the book are completely unrealistic, and it makes light of the true problems.
Here are some other issues I have with this book:
- Eliza lying that her friend fought off her rapist
- Eliza being allowed out of the holding cell multiple times
- Neil's suicide is supposed to invoke sadness in the reader, but how well do we really know him? He has a history with Eliza, sure, but we don't see much development or true characteristics
- There's absolutely zero resolution. Does Eliza's big fancy lawyer mom just whisk her out of the holding cell, no problem? Is there a court hearing, and what's the verdict? We have absolutely no idea, because the book ends before we ever get answers.
If the story had been told from a different perspective, I might have enjoyed it more. Eliza is an insufferable rich teenager, a girl who has an attitude and problems with authority. She's selfish, and it's extremely easy to dislike her, especially when she brags about how much of a monster she is. She praises herself for being cruel, going as far as to chalk up her experience to, "I'm a murderer." There's nothing glorifying about killing someone, and even though the person who died deserved some kind of repercussions for their actions, it says a lot that these girls jumped to death as an solution to their problem, especially when they never once give off the vibe that they're capable of such. Maybe that's the problem here - there are real life issues in this book, and they need to be talked about, but this was the completely wrong way to go about them. The actions of the girls in the book are completely unrealistic, and it makes light of the true problems.
Here are some other issues I have with this book:
Spoiler
- Eliza lying that her friend fought off her rapist
- Eliza being allowed out of the holding cell multiple times
- Neil's suicide is supposed to invoke sadness in the reader, but how well do we really know him? He has a history with Eliza, sure, but we don't see much development or true characteristics
- There's absolutely zero resolution. Does Eliza's big fancy lawyer mom just whisk her out of the holding cell, no problem? Is there a court hearing, and what's the verdict? We have absolutely no idea, because the book ends before we ever get answers.