A review by rennegade
Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

2.0

I finished this book a few days ago and struggled with how to rate it. I feel badly about rating it so low (especially after reading the author note and seeing how many of the events were autobiographical), but this book just did not work for me.

There was a whole lot going on in this novel (

Spoiler

pretty severe self-harm, repressed sexual abuse memories coming back, stalking, a romance with a fellow female high school student, finally remembering that her father was the one who abused her, being held at gunpoint by her father, etc.

). None of these elements specifically made the novel un-enjoyable for me, but as a whole I just felt like the elements were thrown a little haphazardly into the story. I also felt like the two main teenage characters (Kendra and Meghan) were almost caricatures of teens with problems. So many of the things they said seemed to me as though they were sentiments that people think people with these issues say but aren't entirely true to life.

I dunno. The book has excellent reviews, so I could be missing something. This book was recommended to me because of other books in a similar vein that I have read (By the Time You Read This I'll Be Dead, Hate List, Thirteen Reasons Why, etc.), but this book was not a good read for me.