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A review by blueberry31
Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
4.0
This book is not a masterpiece of literature (though it is by no means badly written), but it's an important book nonetheless. It's important because it's so very raw, and real. It exposes the darkest and sickest problems of our modern societies: how normal rape culture has become, how a school shooting in the US is nothing but routine, how girls starving themselves to reach impossibly thin ideals has become common, how women giving up their lives to be nothing but wives to men is almost expected...
Slut shaming, victims blaming, bullying, misogyny... it's all there, exposed, in the small everyday things, in the seemingly "innocent" remarks, in the reactions of people, even in the way the main character, TifAni, thinks about herself and what she goes through. And this is why this book is important: it was such a realistic account of how things probably WOULD have gone if TifAni and her story had been real (except maybe for the Dean apology part). Reading the dialogue made me so angry because that is EXACTLY how so many people react to situations of rape, abuse and sexism.
"[...] the guy who raped me." Mom gasped. "Don't you speak like that!"
"You don't have a body like TifAni's and go to a party with all boys and drink too much and not know exactly what you're doing there. TifAni knew better. She knows what this family's values are."
"I don't condone what [he] did. Of course I don't. But you have to take responsibility for your part in this too."
I guess this book didn't feel like fiction, and from what I hear part of it isn't... I am curious now to read the author's testimonial on Lenny Letter, where she explains the tragic events in her life that were inspiration for this book.
It's a book that deserves to be read because it tells a horrible story of things that happen every day, today, in our modern "civilized" world.
Slut shaming, victims blaming, bullying, misogyny... it's all there, exposed, in the small everyday things, in the seemingly "innocent" remarks, in the reactions of people, even in the way the main character, TifAni, thinks about herself and what she goes through. And this is why this book is important: it was such a realistic account of how things probably WOULD have gone if TifAni and her story had been real (except maybe for the Dean apology part). Reading the dialogue made me so angry because that is EXACTLY how so many people react to situations of rape, abuse and sexism.
"[...] the guy who raped me." Mom gasped. "Don't you speak like that!"
"You don't have a body like TifAni's and go to a party with all boys and drink too much and not know exactly what you're doing there. TifAni knew better. She knows what this family's values are."
"I don't condone what [he] did. Of course I don't. But you have to take responsibility for your part in this too."
I guess this book didn't feel like fiction, and from what I hear part of it isn't... I am curious now to read the author's testimonial on Lenny Letter, where she explains the tragic events in her life that were inspiration for this book.
It's a book that deserves to be read because it tells a horrible story of things that happen every day, today, in our modern "civilized" world.