A review by kpcrossy
Brutes by Dizz Tate

3.0

3/5 ⭐️: dark coming of age story that follows a gang of five girls and a queer boy (the titular ‘brutes’) in small-town Florida. When a young girl called Sammy disappears, the ‘brutes’ watch their neighbours mobilise to search for her, all the while harbouring a secret: they know where Sammy is, but they’re so unsuspecting that no-one believes them. It took me a while to get into this, as the story is (mostly) told in first-person plural. There are chapters set in the future, allowing each member of the group an individual voice to look back on the summer when Sammy disappeared. I found the story difficult to follow when the narrative splintered off, since there was no individual character development up until that point. I also couldn’t get my head around its supernatural elements, and by the end I had no idea what was happening! Having said that, I think this is just one of those books that leaves you wondering. I liked that this story took a different and unexpected approach to the ‘coming of age in a small town’ trope.
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