A review by elianamargalit
Shattering Glass by Gail Giles

2.0

This book definitely wasn't one of my favorites, but it was interesting to see how writing styles in young adult books have changed in such a short period of time. This book utilizes many stereotypes about high school, which seems common for books for young adults written in the early 2000s. The characters are pretty standard--the nerd who wears a pocket protector, the popular guys who only care about themselves, the cheerleader who dates the popular guys--we've seen these types of characters many times before. Although I've absolutely read books published more recently that employ these stereotypes, I would say that more recent books branch out to include more non-stereotypical high school students.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about where the book ended. Even though of course we know what happened after the ending because of the quotes at the beginning of the chapter, I feel like I would've preferred for the events of the ending to be the climax of the book with a more solid resolution afterwards. Especially the revelations about

Rob's dad,

I don't think were handled responsibly. Even though we're only getting comments from the characters and it's probably not what the author thinks, I feel like it perpetuates some dangerous assumptions about

victims of sexual abuse

and it's irresponsible for that to be revealed on the last pages of the book with no resolution.