Exit, Pursued by a Bear - E.K. Johnston

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Hermione Winters is captain of her cheerleading team, and in tiny Palermo Heights, this doesn’t mean what you think it means. At PHHS, the cheerleaders don't cheer for the sports teams; they are the sports team—the pride and joy of a tiny town. The team's summer training camp is Hermione's last and marks the beginning of the end of… she’s not sure what. She does know this season could make her a legend. But during a camp party, someone slips something in her drink. And it all goes black.

In every class, there's a star cheerleader and a pariah pregnant girl. They're never supposed to be the same person. Hermione struggles to regain the control she's always had and faces a wrenching decision about how to move on. The assault wasn't the beginning of Hermione Winter's story and she's not going to let it be the end. She won’t be anyone’s cautionary tale."

I'm going to pretend this book description doesn't exist, because it doesn't do the book justice. I feel like on paper, yes, it describes what happens, but there's something nuanced and emotional that is missing, and I just...read the book, ok?

Exit, Pursued by a Bear starts off with Hermione and the rest of her cheerleading team pulling in to summer training camp for her last year at Palermo Heights High School. She and her best friend, Polly, have been voted co-captains, and they have high hopes and big plans for their squad. Then some asshole drugs and rapes her during a camp party, and she wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what happened beyond stumbling away from the party looking for a trash can to throw her empty cup away in. This moment marks a strange shift in her life. Hermione was raped, yes, and she has to deal with the fallout--finding out she's pregnant, getting an abortion, the way everyone walks on eggshells around her--but with the gap in her memory, the assault also doesn't feel like something that happened to her, and she has to work through that as well.

This is not how Hermione planned on starting her senior year, but it's where she is, and with a virtual army of support at her side in Polly, her parents, and her cheerleading team, she begins to work her way through what happened and learn how to navigate her altered life. There are ups and downs, stumbling blocks and moments of clarity, and through it all that support is a lifeline that keeps her going and makes her strong. That support is also what makes this book what it is: an emotional, powerful handbook for what should happen anytime someone comes forward about sexual assault. 

While the nature of this book made it tough to read at times and I definitely cried plenty, I found myself thinking often as I read of the experience I had with Asking for It by Louise O'Neill and juxtaposing Hermione's experience with Emma's. The sad truth is that people who come forward about assault tend to have experiences closer to Emma's (horrible, for those who have not read Asking for It) than to Hermione's. It gave me hope seeing Polly fiercely defend her friend, seeing her squad unite in looking out for her, and watching as Hermione found people in her corner whom she never expected to be there. Was it neater and less realistic than this experience would probably actually be? Sure. But that's what makes it such an excellent road map for how to be supportive to loved ones after an assault. Read this book. Share it with the people in your life, especially the men. Let's all learn how to be allies.

Someone I Used to Know - Patty Blount

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"TRIGGER WARNING: Boys will be boys is never an excuse.

It’s been two years since the night that changed Ashley’s life. Two years since she was raped by her brother’s teammate. And a year since she sat in a court and watched as he was given a slap-on-the-wrist sentence. But the years have done nothing to stop the pain or lessen the crippling panic attacks that make her feel like she’s living a half-life.

It’s been two years of hell for Derek. His family is totally messed up and he and his sister are barely speaking. He knows she partially blames him for what happened, and totally blames him for how he handled the aftermath. Now at college, he has to come to terms with what happened, and the rape culture that he was inadvertently a part of that destroyed his sister’s life. 

When it all comes to a head at Thanksgiving, Derek and Ashley have to decide if their relationship is able to be saved. And if their family can ever be whole again."

Oof, this book. This is a difficult topic to write about, but it's so important when it comes to opening a dialogue to have stories like this out there, and while it feels weird to read a book about a 14-year-old being raped and say "this book is important, and everyone needs to read it," well...this book is important. And everyone needs to read it.

The use of dual narrators, telling the story from both Ashley and Derek's perspectives, was an excellent approach. As Derek and his friends learn, it can't just be women, male victims, or people with sisters/wives/daughters fighting this fight...men with no other stake in the game besides a desire to be a good person need to become allies, and what better way to help young men along that path than to give them a role model like Derek? Watching Derek grapple with his mistakes was almost as painful as reading Ashley's story, but it was also inspiring to see him learn from them, ask questions, and start to become a better, stronger person. We need more narratives like his in the world.

With Ashley's story, the court excerpts at the start of chapters were a punch to the gut, and they help the reader right away to get into Ashley's head and try to feel what she was and is still feeling. Her chapters were hard to read at times, but they should be hard to read. I don't want to meet the person who reads this book and doesn't struggle through it. 

One thing that really hit me hard was her realization that there is no justice. No matter what happens, nothing is going to fix what happened to her. She will always have to live with it, it will always be a struggle, and nothing about that is just or fair. Another heartbreaking piece of her narrative was the question of why the bright future of a high school football player was more important than her bright future. That is a narrative that is spun so often in cases like this...look at Brock Turner as a real-world example. He's so talented, he has such a bright future, something like this shouldn't define the rest of his life! But...it's fine that it will define the rest of his victim's life? He chose this, they didn't. Nothing about that is acceptable, and the fact that so many people don't even think about the victim in cases like this is disheartening.

Ultimately, I think what makes this book most important is that nothing about it felt like fiction to me. Every word, every experience was real. Ashley, Derek, and their family may be made up, Vic may not have ever existed, but the things that happened to them have happened to other people. Do happen to other people, every day. Read this book, then share it with someone you know. Build more allies. Put less pressure on women to attempt to police the behaviors of others and shift that responsibility where it belongs. Books like this can help change the world.

Moxie - Jennifer Mathieu

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"Moxie girls fight back!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution."

I mostly loved this, so let's start with the good stuff. It was beautiful to read a book about young women pushing back against negative behavior, and it was particularly awesome to see them courageously do so even with the fear that no one else would be standing next to them when they did. Awesome. It's hard to do that, and women of all ages need to see more examples of badass women taking a stand. Additionally, I greatly appreciated that the tension between Viv and her BFF after Viv started spending more time with the new girl was resolved in such a sweet way (although I do wish it hadn't come at the hands of sexual assault. Grrrrr.). Just as we need more examples of fantastic, courageous, vocal women, the world could do with fewer catty, pointless fights between friends. Kudos to Jennifer Mathieu for writing characters with the maturity to resolve their issues through communication and trust. Finally, it was refreshing to see romance included that supplemented, but did not supersede, the main narrative. Feminists need love too, so I'm not opposed to romantic elements in stories like this, but so often the romance becomes the focal point. Mathieu did a great job of weaving Viv's young love into the story in a balanced way.

Now...a couple of things that really got under my skin. One, there's no superintendent or school district administration to go to? I get that douchebag #1's dad was the principal, so no one at the school could be gone to for assistance, but for fuck's sake go over his head! How did it get to the point where this crazy-ass principal was trying to suspend/expel a third of the school before something happened? Bonkers. Second, Viv's clashes with her boyfriend when he said stupid things. I have a husband, and said husband is not a lady, so on occasion it can be hard for him to fully grasp the difficulties of womanhood. Consequently, he says dumb shit sometimes. When he does, I have two options. Option A: Get mad at him because he just couldn't understand. Option B: HELP HIM BE AN ALLY. Why is what he is saying frustrating? How could he reframe his thinking to be supportive instead? There were soooooooo many chances for Viv to be like, "look, bud, I get that not all guys are bad. It's awesome that you have cool, super into baseball stats, bros to eat lunch with. Would said cool bros be interested in joining the cause?" Open up a dialogue, yo. Help him understand.

Anyhoo...overall, fantastic read. I highly recommend it.

Nightingale - Kristin Hannah

My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

From the cover:

"In love we find out who we want to be.
In war we find out who we are.

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. 

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah takes her talented pen to the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime."

Oh, Kristin Hannah, you know how to paint a word picture. I'm not going to go into great detail on the plot of this book...it's about World War II, I think we can all extrapolate the gist of the plot. All I'm going to say is that every second of the book was full of emotion and that if you're a fan of historical fiction or books that make you feel sometimes horrible and sometimes wonderful feelings, you should read it. Seriously. Read this book!