Title: Rape Girl
Author: Alina Klein
Series: N/A
Publisher: namelos
Publish Date: 8/1/12
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 132
Source: Net galley
Buy the Book: Rape Girl
SUMMARY: Valerie always wanted to be the smart girl. The pretty girl. The popular girl.
But not the rape girl.
That’s who she is now. Rape Girl. Because everyone seems to think they know the truth about what happened with Adam that day, and they don’t think Valerie’s telling it. Before, she had a best friend, a crush, and a close-knit family. After, she has a court case, a support group, and a house full of strangers.
The real truth is, nothing will ever be the same.
Rape Girl is the compelling story of a survivor who does the right thing and suffers for it. It is also the story of a young woman’s struggle to find the strength to fight back. (Via Goodreads)
BRIAN’S REVIEW: Rape is delicate subject matter, especially in a YA book aimed at teens. It’s a subject that’s been dealt with and ruminated over in hundreds and hundreds of stories. It’s so easy to tell a story about a girl who gets raped and make it melodramatic and schmaltzy. I even attempted a rape story, back in 2005. I was obsessed with the Kill Bill movies and wanted to make a short film about a girl who gets raped and takes revenge. Over the course of ten years I made forty short films, and that one’s probably my favorite. It was really tough subject matter to deal with it, especially from a male filmmaker’s point of view, but I managed to get into the heart and soul of a damaged girl who can’t move on with her life. So I know. I’ve been there. Telling a rape story is difficult! If you’re not careful, you’ll end up making a Lifetime movie with Candace Cameron titled SHE CRIED NO!
I usually don’t turn to the back of a book first (in this case, I pushed a button on my Kindle that took me to the back page), but I’m glad I did because it took me to the acknowledgements page, where Alina Klein, author of Rape Girl, mentions that she herself was a rape victim at the age of sixteen. It really made this short novel resonate with me. This book is daring in many ways, most of which is in its revealing title. I feel like people might glaze over this book because of the title (although they won’t look past the cover, which is quietly luminous), but they would be doing themselves a disservice. This is a disturbing but ultimately heroic book that shows the before and after of a girl who gets raped, and the aftermath is especially fascinating.
I was most intrigued by the aftermath of the incident, because while it’s clear the main character Valerie was indeed raped, she’s called a liar by so many in her town, because the alleged rapist is a super gorgeous, friendly, popular, and even religious, young man, who is considered a friend by most everybody. I also was fascinated by Valerie’s relationship with her mother, which doesn’t necessarily play out the way you think it’s going to. Overall I was very impressed with this debut novel. It was almost a little too fast at spots (the novel is super short at 132 pages), and at times the writing was too passive, but overall it shows a lot of promise for author Alina Klein. I’m curious to see what she’ll come up next.
