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A review by emmaward55
You're Next by Kylie Schachte
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I'm so torn with this book. On the one hand, I love the writing, themes, plot and characters: I'd absolutely snap up a whole Poirot-length series about them!
My only gripe comes with the ending, and I admit that it's more of a personal dislike than a flaw on Schachte's writing ability. I enjoyed the gritty and realistic take on the justice system and how unfair it is to girls like Ava and Lucy. What I didn't like is how hopeless it all feels at the end. Yes, we the reader know who really killed Ava and why, but the book leaves little hope that her killer will ever face any real justice. Instead, the system failed Flora once again and she's left even more beaten than before, both physically and emotionally. The message seems to be "why try? Bad guys always win and the people seeking justice take all the damage".
The difficulty here is that a sunshine and rainbows happy ending would have been too unrealistic, but I think Schachte could have found a medium. Leave the fate of Ava's killers unknown, but have a scene with Flora reconnecting with VT and vowing to get through it together. In my opinion, books that tackle weighty subject matters like this need to leave the reader wanting to fight. We all know of girls and women brutalized in our real lives, and we need that hope to survive it.
Without that hope, how can we ever leave our homes again?
My only gripe comes with the ending, and I admit that it's more of a personal dislike than a flaw on Schachte's writing ability. I enjoyed the gritty and realistic take on the justice system and how unfair it is to girls like Ava and Lucy. What I didn't like is
The difficulty here is that a sunshine and rainbows happy ending would have been too unrealistic, but I think Schachte could have found a medium. Leave the fate of Ava's killers unknown, but have a scene with Flora reconnecting with VT and vowing to get through it together. In my opinion, books that tackle weighty subject matters like this need to leave the reader wanting to fight. We all know of girls and women brutalized in our real lives, and we need that hope to survive it.
Without that hope, how can we ever leave our homes again?
Content Warnings
A sapphic character is murdered at the start, though it's never even suggested that her sexuality was the reason for it.