This book is about high school senior Meredith. She's a preacher's daughter who doesn't believe in the Bible. When one night she drunkenly signs a pact to lose her virginity before she graduates she'll discover that there are worse things than being ignored in high school. When a mean girl posts the pact and suddenly she's the center of attention she never asked for her world starts to fall apart. Can she figure out how to fix her problems and graduate without losing hope?
Major Spoilers
This book made me feel but not in a good way. I had very negative reactions to this book not because the book was bad but because it was so good. The subject matter is what made it difficult to read but also made me want to KEEP reading. This book has so many heavy topics such as, teenaged bullying, religious abuse, animal abuse, rape and the main characters feeling of self doubt.
Lets start with the teenaged bullying. A mean girl Meredith is forced to collaborate with on a school project finds the pact and posts it all over school. Things like this really do happen in real life. There are bullies in all school and they do some pretty nasty things. It was interesting to see how fast the teenagers turned on Meredith. She's a preacher's daughter and the pact says that she's wants to lose her virginity which means she's still a virgin but over night people are calling her a slut. Why? Because she though about having sex? All teenagers think and do have sex. And this probably happens in real life which shows that teenagers can be dumb. Then the bullying escalates when she's forced into the trunk of her car and abandoned in a forest because the mean girl thought Meredith was flirting with her boyfriend. The logic of teens makes no sense.
Next lets discuss religious abuse. This is probably the part of the novel that made me the most uncomfortable. The parents are uber religious. Ok i'm all for religion I was raised religious but there's being religious and then there's hindering peoples human rights. You can teach your kids whatever you want but you can't force them to believe what you believe that's child abuse. Children will always separate from their parents it's a fact of life kids leave eventually and once they're gone they can do and think what they want.
When Meredith's parents find out about the pact they go religious on her and when she says she doesn't believe her father kicks her out of the house. You can't pick and choose when to be a parent just because you don't like what your kid did or said that's cheap.
Another section of the novel has a friend of Meredith's sister being sent away to presumably a "church camp" where kids are "brought back to the light". This made me sick and knowing that these camps exist in real life is disgusting this goes back to encroaching on people's human rights especially if they are kids. Near the end of the novel Meredith returns home to find out that her parent's have signed her up for one of these camps she is saved by her younger sister's warning. But that was one of the creepiest scenes of the book. Men coming in the middle of the night to grab kids to take them against their will to a "faith camp" is so vile I can't even explain how this made me feel. Luckily Meredith was saved because she is 18 and can't be forced to go somewhere against her will.
Everything about the religion in this book could be used to make kids not want to think about religion if it's this batshit crazy. Which I think is sad because religion can have it's place and can help people and there are nice religious people. But I think the point of the book was to be able to show the darker side of religion and that people don't all think or believe the same thing.
Also I hated that the dad tried to get the sex ed taken out of schools because it's not abstinence. If you don't want your kid to take sex ed that's fine but you're not God you can't make that choice for all kids, other parents have the right to teach their kids the way they see fit.
Side note: Why is Meredith's family French? It seemed kind of random I thought maybe the author was French but it doesn't seem that way based on their author profile. Did the author just want the family to be different? It just seemed like and odd choice to me.
Next lets discuss Meredith's feelings of self doubt about the events that happened to her and the attempted rape. Throughout the whole book Meredith thinks she isn't good enough even before the pact was posted. I understand some teens don't have self confidence but it was a little sad. I hate that at times she doubts if things are really her fault. Even though she repeats to herself that she didn't deserve what was happening to her it was hard to see her struggle. When she finally decides to ignore the pact and enjoy what's left of her high school experience she goes to a party and is almost raped. This made me angry and rape should but I was thinking to myself this girl cannot catch a break! I hate the "you were asking for it" comment. I don't care if you're a stripper or a porn start and you're naked or just a normal girl wearing "provocative" clothing, no one EVER deserves to be raped. Rape isn't about the victim it's about the attacker's lack of or need for control. Definitely another difficult subject of this book.
And I will finish with animal abuse. This one broke my heart. So Meredith volunteer at an animal shelter and there is this one dog that she loves called Squirt. An energetic little dog she is eventually adopted by a creepy guy. Now I thought at first maybe the guy knew about the pact and was there to see Meredith which would have been really creepy but it turns out he bought Squirt to be in a dog fighting ring. I have to admit that was the one really big surprise of this whole book I did not see that one coming. Eventually Meredith and her friends save Squirt but it was pretty scary.
Now after reading this review you might think I hated the book but I didn't. I gave it five stars because it made me feel and even though they weren't happy feelings any book that can make me feel so viscerally is amazing. The writing was done well and the plot made sense. I would 100% recommend this book to everyone but especially teens and parents of teens. This book would give everyone the chance to talk about all the topics I listed above and how to react to such situations. I definitely feel like this could be one of those books that is discussed in high school 50 years from now. This book was brilliant kudos to the author for tackling such heavy subject with tact and empathy.
✯★✯★✯
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