Review : Rape Girl by Alina Klein

Summary (from Goodreads)

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.

Personal Thoughts

When I requested Rape Girl by Alina Klein from NetGalley, I was expecting an intense and deep story that would shock me. It ended up disappointing me a little since I was looking for so much more out of the book.

Valerie, the main character, decides to hold a party at her house when her mom is away one night. Everything is going really well. She's having an awesome time since her long-time crush,Adam, is there and he's paying attention to her. However, since she's drunk and ends up puking on him, nothing happens until the next morning he surprises her by arriving at her house again. He then proceeds to rape her. Devastated, Valerie spills the beans to her mother. When an investigation begins, everybody at school, even her best friend, refuse to believe that Adam actually raped her since the previous night they were heavily flirting.

I thought it was incredibly brave of Valerie to confess to her mother about what had happened with Adam. It showed how truly courageous she was. Plus, Valerie went through a hell of a time in the book. Her school friends were labeling her as "Rape Girl" and everyone claimed that she was lying about that night. Moreover, her best friend, abandoned her since she ,too, didn't believe Valerie. Mimi was such a lousy excuse for a friend that I truly wondered what Valerie ever saw in her to consider her as a best friend. She was a non-supportive, bitchy and horrible human being. If I were Valerie, I would give the girl a slap or two. Although I admired Valerie for her strength, I never really connected with her character. To be honest, she was bland and did not really have a personality that I could relate to. Her feelings and emotions related to the rape were undecipherable and as a reader, I was yearning to undergo the same sufferings as her in order to fully understand her situation. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that none of the characters had any depth and nor were they well fleshed-out except maybe for Sandrina, a girl who befriends Valerie, but she only appeared briefly. 

Rape is a very sensitive subject and it needs to be tackled gently and wisely. While I do think the theme was handled in an intelligent way in Rape Girl, I wasn't impressed. That's because I felt nothing. I expected a storm of emotions to strike me when I first started the book, but I kept reading waiting to experience fear, intense sorrow, grief and anger. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and I was left a little let down by the outcome of the book. There's a lot of telling and very little showing. I'll attribute that to the short length of the book since there wasn't much space to really depict Valerie's rape and its after-math in an affecting and poignant manner. I honestly think that the book could have been much better had the characters been well-developed and the book not so rushed.

To sum up, Rape Girl wasn't what I was looking for and it pretty much thwarted all my expectations. It might not have really appealed to me, but other readers might actually identify with the characters and gain a good experience from reading the book.

Rating

Cover : 3/5
Plot : 3/5
Characters : 2/5
Writing : 2/5

**The actual overall rating is 2.5 stars, but since I don't have that as an image for my rating system, I'm rounding it up to a 3 stars rating**