My rating: 4 of 5 stars
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
----Anonymous
Aaron Hartzler, an American author, pens his debut novel involving teens, assault, lies and mystery, What We Saw that accounts the story of a high school teenager who investigates the sexual assault on her friend in a small town. Withstanding the prejudices and unimaginable controversies, this young girl fights against the society, which gets enveloped by the darkness of a rape, to find out the truth.
This book is actually based on a true story, which goes as follows: (Source: Wiki)
The Steubenville High School rape occurred in Steubenville, Ohio, on the night of August 11, 2012, when a high school girl, incapacitated by alcohol, was publicly and repeatedly sexually assaulted by her peers, several of whom documented the acts in social media. The victim was transported, undressed, photographed, and sexually assaulted. She was also penetrated vaginally by other students' fingers (digital penetration), an act defined as rape under Ohio law.
The jocular attitude of the assailants was documented on Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and cell phone recordings of the acts. The crime and ensuing legal proceedings generated considerable controversy and galvanized a national conversation about rape and rape culture. Two students and high school football players, Ma'lik Richmond and Trent Mays, both 16 at the time of the crime, were convicted in juvenile court for the rape of a minor. Additionally, three other adults have been indicted for obstructing the investigation into the rape, while Steubenville's superintendent of schools has been charged with hindering the investigation into a rape that took place earlier in 2012.
Synopsis:
Kate Weston can piece together most of the bash at John Doone’s house: shots with Stacey Stallard, Ben Cody taking her keys and getting her home early—the feeling that maybe he’s becoming more than just the guy she’s known since they were kids.
But when a picture of Stacey passed out over Deacon Mills’s shoulder appears online the next morning, Kate suspects she doesn’t have all the details. When Stacey levels charges against four of Kate’s classmates, the whole town erupts into controversy. Facts that can’t be ignored begin to surface, and every answer Kate finds leads back to the same question: Where was Ben when a terrible crime was committed?
This story—inspired by real events—from debut novelist Aaron Hartzler takes an unflinching look at silence as a form of complicity. It’s a book about the high stakes of speaking up, and the razor thin line between guilt and innocence that so often gets blurred, one hundred and forty characters at a time.
Kate was at the same school basketball king's wild party where her friend, Stacey, was raped and later a video of her getting raped by those basketball champs of the school went viral in the social media. It seems the party was more than just wild, no one seems to remember anything at all, when Stacey accuses four of the basketball champs. Stacey soon becomes a victim of slut shaming because of her dressing sense and her demeanor and all, mostly because the whole town worships the school basketball team like a god. Now, Kate, who is torn between the intense deep feelings for another basket ball champ, Ben, and her friend, Stacey, who helps to get those guys arrested for rape, embarks on a not so easy path to look for the truth by traversing against the tide of this rape culture and slut shaming in a town where people have prejudices and other narrow minded thoughts when it comes to blaming the girl for getting raped by the boys.
While reading, this book might make you remind of the book, All the Rage by Courtney Summers, where the rape culture in a small town was portrayed so vividly.
The writing style is absolutely brilliant that has been mixed with emotions that only makes the readers move with it's tune. The gripping narrative style is well depicted into the storyline and that is engaging enough to keep the readers hooked on till the very end. The prose is like a kaleidoscope where our young narrator guides us through the discrimination and lies towards the ray of truth that finally sets the story free.
From the main character to those characters which are present even mildly in the book are all very strongly portrayed by stripping away their picture perfect faces to the core of ugly truth that makes them look flawed. Kate is one of the strongest YA heroines that I ever came across in the YA realistic fiction genre where the author gives her an original voice laced with realism. Kate challenges every biased fact or thought when she came across them while searching for the light. Kate's determination and calm demeanor is ideal for this book that handles a sensitive issue in the world of teenagers.
Kate too knew that Stacey has a reputation of being seductive or something like that, still Kate confronts the lies against Stacey to find out what really happened that night.
The theme itself is tricky and delicate when projecting rape not as a crime but as a society's huge drawback in the recent times. Social media once again plays a vital role which is dangerously featured in the story. The shortcomings and the drawbacks of a social media have been so excellently arrested in this story that it will make the young readers minds fill with horror as well as enlightenment towards its intensity of being used as a weapon in today's world.
The mystery will keep the readers on it's edges and along with Kate's mind and journey, the readers can easily comprehend with the dark reality about today's society, and so does the mystery, which seems so near yet so far away or rather hidden under layers of lies and inclinations towards the basketball team, especially boys. The climax is just too perfect for this dark themed book, although the chemistry falls short in this book. Kate and Ben's relationship are though portrayed at the right moments still it fails to make the readers feel deeply with their emotions.
Verdict: A must read book in today's society for all young teens as well as for the adults.
Courtesy: Thanks to the author's publicist for giving me an opportunity to read and review an ARC of this book.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Info:
Aaron Hartzler is the author of Rapture Practice (Little, Brown), a memoir about getting kicked out of his Christian high school two weeks before graduation. The New York Times called Rapture Practice "effervescent and moving, evocative and tender." It was also named one of Kirkus Reviews and Amazon's Best Books of 2013, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His next book, a novel called What We Saw, will be published by HarperTeen on September 22, 2015.
Visit him here
Book Purchase Links:
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your feedback!