Reviews with content warning for Pedophilia - Girl in Pieces

Spoilers Ahead:
This book has me speechless. Sobbing, on the floor. It has such raw content, and such deep meaning. I love it, it's one of my firm favourites of the year so far. However, it does discuss various different topics like TW suicide, self-harm, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, rape and sexual assault, so if you're not interested in reading about heavier topics, I wouldn't recommend this book, or this review, actually.
We follow Charlie as she's in an institution. Her best friend, Ellis, attempted to commit suicide, but it didn't kill her, merely took her mobility away from her. Her parents sent her away, and Charlie, being Ellis's best friend, doesn't want to live in a world without her. Her father had also, I think, passed away to suicide (drowned in a river) and her mother was so upset, and resorted to hitting Charlie. Charlie was hanging with the wrong people, doing drugs, and was sent to a house where she was going to be sold for sex. There was also a moment where her friends had to save her from being assaulted.
So in the institution, they monitor her all the time. There's nothing that can hurt them there, and there are a lot of people who use self-harm as a way to deal with everything happening to them. Charlie still feels quite alone there, and often its very overwhelming, and she only has bonds with one teacher, who they call Casper.
Charlie is being released from the institution, as she is doing well. Her mother comes to pick her up, and she is told to not drink, or do drugs, or smoke, or self-harm, and Casper - Bethany - gives Charlie her email. Her mother has no intention of looking after her, and her good friend, Mikey, who had a crush on Ellis when Charlie liked him, has offered his place to her. His landlord, Ariel, tells her she needs to get a job, and she does. She's a dishwasher at a place called Grit, where she meets Riley. She moves out to a really awful little flat, but it's the first thing she's ever owned herself, and she's proud.
Mikey leaves to go on tour with his band, and she finds out he has a girlfriend, who he then marries on tour. From then on, she ignores all his emails, as she still likes him a little bit. She feels that no one will love her, because she's 'damaged goods'.
Now, bearing in mind Charlie is seventeen, Riley is twenty-seven. She's attracted to him, as are most people in the village, but she quickly finds out he's a mess. Always drinking on shift, and asking her to do drug runs, and in return he gives her food.
A couple of weeks go by, and she shows him her scars, and he doesn't mind them. He's super nice to her - as groomers are, initially. They end up sleeping together, and she spends most nights around his. They hook up in Grit, although this is against her will, and they are spotted. Julia, the owner and Riley's brother, is astounded, but no one gets fired. They still see each other, although Charlie is starting to drown under his own bad habits.
Blue, a fellow institutioner, turns up and lives with her. She flirts with Riley, and she smokes and she drinks and she does drugs, and so does Charlie. She's circling the drain with him. One day, she goes to his house and she finds Blue there. She's doing meth, and has relapsed, and she says that Lousia, one of their friends, has set herself on fire, and hasn't made it. Charlie finds Riley hooking up with someone else, and throws her against the wall. When she gets back to the flat, it's trashed, and everything is stolen. She self-harms.
She wakes up to Linus and Tanner, her colleagues, taking her to Felix, their grandfather. He's an artist, and he lives in the remote countryside, and she learns a lot from his kindness.
Too soon it is time for them to return. She still has her job, but Riley was stealing money for drugs the whole time, and has been fired. Plus, he and Wendy, the hookup, got into a car crush, and he's now in male rehab. Blue says she will get clean if her and Charlie work together, so they both help each other. Felix offers her a job working for him, and she accepts it. In one last visit to Riley, who does a show for charity, he sings a song he wrote for her, which is his way of apologising to her. Then, she sets off on her own.
Wow. Reading this book was heavy, but reflecting on it is even heavier. So many important things were discussed and highlighted in this book, and it's refreshing not to read a book where everything is perfect. For one, I understood a lot of Charlie's mental struggles, and could relate a lot throughout this book. The idea of not being alone, but being alone is just hitting the hammer straight on the nail.
A few years ago, I would have thought that Riley did love Charlie. I was in the exact same mindset as her, and I would have said that his attention is better than nothing. Upon growing older, I realise he never loved her. At least, not in the way she wanted and deserved. Automatically, the age gap was a real red flag. Why would he think about someone so young, let alone actually go for them? I like Charlie's character arc though, how she turned her life around and had a better mental outlook. I freaking love Charlie so much, and I'm glad she found a happier ending in the end. I also have to admit, I did like Riley's redemption in the end. He's still not excused for literally everything that he did in the book, whether it be the, essentially, rape of Charlie and the fact he's, essentially, a paedophile - that makes him disgusting. Even after the redemption, I still don't like him. But I do like how it shows that people can change. Obviously, we only saw a snippet of him after rehab, so he could have gone rogue again, I think he went a few times anyway, but I'm glad they showed Charlie getting the apology she deserved.
PSA for anyone out there: times do get better. Take it from me! :)

Favourite Quotes:
‘I feel like I’m waking up and going back into my darkness, all at once.’

‘Whether someone has hurt you or made you feel bad or unworthy or unclean, rather than taking the rational step of realizing that person is an asshole or a psycho and should be shot or strung up and you should stay the fuck away from them, instead we internalize our abuse and begin to blame and punish ourselves and weirdly, once you start cutting or burning or fucking because you feel so shitty and unworthy, your body starts to release this neat-feeling shit called endorphins and you feel so fucking high the world is like cotton candy at the best and most colorful state fair in the world, only bloody and stuffed with infection. But the fucked-up part is once you start self-harming, you can never not be a creepy freak, because your whole body is now a scarred and charred battlefield and nobody likes that on a girl, nobody will love that, and so all of us, every one, is screwed, inside and out.’

‘I didn’t see someone with a beautiful mouth. I saw someone who had lipstick on the skin of her face.’

‘I should’ve looked closer at the faces of the girls on the ripped couch as Evan and Dump carried me in. In my stupor, my lungs like cement, my eyes blurry, I thought they were just stoned, their eyes gone hazy. I know, now, that their eyes were dead.’

‘I need release, I need to hurt myself more than the world can hurt me, and then I can comfort myself.’

‘A vicious circle: more scars = more shame = more pain.’

‘When I told Casper it felt ugly, do you know what she said? She said, Does IT feel ugly or do YOU feel ugly, Charlie? Because there is a difference, and I want you to think about what that difference might be.’

‘They really fucking ask a lot of you in this place.’

‘I look at the turtle. His legs twitch, like he’s shrugging at me: What do you expect me to do? I’m a goddamn turtle trapped in a tank.’

‘“The moral of the story, Charlie, is this: Don’t let the cereal eat you. It’s only a fucking box of cereal, but it will eat you alive if you let it.”’

‘There is being alone, and then there is being alone. They are not the same thing at all.’

‘And now we’re smiling stupidly at each other. Or, Riley’s smiling at me like he might smile at anything with breasts, and I’m the one smiling stupidly because I’m a stupid jackass.’

‘“Do you, like, pray to it, or something?” Talking to rocks. Blue would have a field day with that one.’

‘I just wanted to feel better. My own body is my deepest enemy. It wants, it wants, it wants, and when it does not get, it cries and cries and I punish it. How can you live in fear of your very self?’

‘Everyone seems to have a grip on life but me. When is anything going to get better?’

‘“That’s the exquisiteness of youth: you are allowed the luxury of vanity, of self-examination. Take it! Don’t be ashamed of yourself.”’

‘“There’s nothing wrong with you, Charlie. Not one thing. Can’t you see that?”

But that’s a lie, isn’t it? Because there are so many things wrong with me, obviously and actually. What I want Mikey to say is: There are so many things wrong with you and it doesn’t matter.’

‘Move forward. Keep on truckin’. I’m getting tired of everyone thinking it’s so easy to live. Because it’s not. At all.’

‘Maybe Mikey is about to have his perfect life with kids and a wife and a rock band and everything he’s ever wanted, while I’m dehydrated and tired and should be drinking water, but I’m not, I’m drinking coffee, spending seven dollars and sixty-eight cents to wish myself a happy fucking eighteenth birthday that I’d forgotten all about.’

‘She glances at the toilet. “There’s no door on that.”

“I wash dishes for a living, Blue. You don’t get doors for that.”’

‘I’m so tired of drunk and desperate. I’m tired and angry at me. For letting myself get smaller and smaller in the hopes that he would notice me more. But how can someone notice you if you keep getting smaller?’

‘“Did you know Tanner is my brother? We stopped off for a quick visit with Dad.” Farther away, in the blackness, Tanner is kicking a tombstone and spitting on the ground. “We didn’t really get along all that well with old Dad.”’

‘“And I don’t mean what happened with that young man, because those things, they come and go, it’s one of the painful lessons we learn. I think you are having a different sort of heartbreak. Maybe a kind of heartbreak of being in the world when you don’t know how to.”’

‘Cutting is a fence you build upon your own body to keep people out but then you cry to be touched. But the fence is barbed. What then?’

‘People should know about us. Girls who write their pain on their bodies.’

‘“Have my baby, Riley!” A woman, cackling.

Riley answers, “Did you not listen to that first song, lady?”’

Content Warnings