"A rumour is like a fire. You might think you’ve extinguished it but one creeping, red tendril, one single wisp of smoke is enough to let it leap back into life again. Especially if someone is watching, waiting to fan the flames …New school.
Tick.
New town.
Tick.
New surname.
Tick.
Social media profiles?
Erased.
There’s nothing to trace Anna back to her old life. Nothing to link her to the ‘incident’."
I hadn't heard anything about this book before picking it up and the vague blurb kept me guessing. The last thing I expected was the plot I got. I won’t go so far as to saying I enjoyed the whole plot, however it wasn’t a painful or hard read. It was quite a light-hearted read for the content covered.
This book tries to deal with some important issues of slut-shaming, revenge porn bullying, teen pregnancy, abortion, and double standards. Some I think it does okay, others less so, but I think the main issue is that there is too much in this book. I think it would have been much better if it focused on one issue and had that as the sole focus. The content is never hard hitting and is covered in such a PG way.
One thing that really confused me was the lack of parental involvement or challenge; Anna has had private photos shared around school on social media twice, and yet no one considers contacting the police on either occasion. Anna is underage; she has had private photos sent around as revenge; essentially what we are talking about here is the distribution of child pornography. Yet no teacher (at either school) points this out, rather they just want to get rid of Anna. This is likely a realistic representation because it wouldn’t surprise me if teachers did this, but it was a little disappointing that this aspect of the book wasn’t addressed.
It did frustrate me a little how the three main girls resolution came about; it just seemed a little bit rushed and didn’t really give them the chance for them to really explore their issues. What frustrated me even more though was the reveal that Anna’s mother was the one who shared the information about her friends abortion with a previous friend. I know we’re meant to understand that Anna’s mother is lonely and wants friends, but we also clearly see her anger towards Anna’s past friends and their parents, so I honestly don’t believe she would then start yapping on with them about what was going on for Anna now. It just didn’t ring true to me.
What I honestly found a bit boring with this book was the flashbacks; they just didn’t intrigue me or grip me at all, and I found myself skipping through these sections as I just felt they didn’t further the plot at all. I appreciate they were meant to show parallels between the past treatment of women and how we treat women today however that concept, while a brilliant concept, wasn't executed well enough to actually mean anything.
Overall a book that tried to cover tough topics that do need to be discussed but pussy footed around it too much to convey the true horror and invasion that it was covering. It's writing let it down.
Age Rating 14+. As said above, covers some more mature topics and does describe the photos used for revenge porn.
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