Grace was raped by the town golden boy, Zac. He’s a big shot lacrosse player and no one believes he’d ever do anything wrong. Everything Grace says is just an attempt to bring him down and the video that was posted on Facebook seems to show that Grace consented to what happened that night. Why would Zac be a rapist if it looks like she said yes?

Ian, Zac’s best friend and teammate, has always had a thing for Grace. At least he did. He knows now that Zac’s been with her, she’s off limits.

But now, Grace and Ian are both being forced to clean the lockers at the school. Grace because she continues to lash out at those who berate her for what she’s saying about Zac and Ian as a means of making amends for some of his own behavior that came out as a result of health issues he’s been having (there’s a plot line here about athletics and concussions). When the two of them are thrown together in this project, things change for both Grace and Ian. Both of them are tense guarded as a result of their relationships to one another and to Zac, but slowly, that begins to chip away as they talk to one another. And for the first time, perhaps Grace has an ally. Perhaps someone believes what happened to her.

Some Boys by Patty Blount is an exploration of rape culture. This book has a solid basis in reality, with shades of Steubenville echoing throughout. But what makes Blount’s approach a bit different is that her story is told from dual points of view. It’s an uneasy read, but it does a fair job of looking into the experience through the eyes of a girl who can’t be heard and a boy who experiences the effects of rape culture in an entirely different manner — as a boy and as a boy who happens to be extremely close to the guy who raped. Blount examines how a town can turn against a single girl who dares to say something happened to her and her body, especially when those allegations are against someone who happens to be held in high esteem. This is the other side of the “but those poor boys will have their futures ruined” story that the news loves to feed us, the one where we understand the implications of what it means to have your body violated and to have your story ignored completely because those poor boys and their futures.

There are very few books that look at rape culture in YA, and while this is a solid entry and one absolutely worth reading and discussing (and it should be read and discussed), it never quite cut as deeply as it could have. Sometimes when you read a book and you know it’s important, you accept elements of plot or character that are imperfect because you know what the story is doing or saying is enough on its own. But even knowing that the issue of rape culture here was well-done and that it’s a book that is more than worthwhile reading, I couldn’t help but see these things and feel like they could have been tightened, reconsidered, or not included at all in order to make a much tighter, more well-written book as a whole.

Grace’s mother really wants her to leave town and go abroad, to get away from the nightmare she keeps putting herself through by showing up at school and being ridiculed. While Grace chooses not to leave, which garners her mother’s support, it felt like it was always an option. It didn’t make her situation any easier, obviously, but it made me think about how privilege can be wrapped up in situations like this. That Grace chooses to stay in town and resisted leaving is huge and important — and it empowers her because she knows she’s right and she knows that she needs to continue having her life here — I wish that the element of possibility had never existed. It seemed unnecessary to even offer that out because it said to me that there was an out. I never got the sense of claustrophobia here because that was always in the back of my mind. It’s not blaming her for not leaving; it’s instead a question of why that was even offered up as an option. Had it not been there at all, I’d never have put it in my mind. But it was, so I couldn’t shake it.

My bigger issue with the book, though, was the fact this was set up as a romance. One of my biggest pet peeves in a big story like this is that a boy comes in and becomes the hero. It seems like an all-too-common response in stories about trauma, but it wasn’t until Ian came forth and said he believed Grace that anyone else so much as wanted to listen to her and believe she never gave Zac consent. While I thought Ian’s growth was great and while I thought he handled going against his best friend was believable, I so wish it hadn’t been a boy — one who had a crush on Grace, particularly — who had to be the one to stand up for her. To be the reason her story and her voice was validated. It spoke too easily to how the male voice is the one that’s believed and respected, not just in the story, but in our society on a larger level. Why is it girls can’t have such powerful allies in other girls? Why does that validation need to come through a boy?

More, I did not care whether Ian and Grace would end up together. The romance felt like a distraction and a way to talk around the bigger issue without addressing it head on. It was uninteresting. I cared so much more about Grace making it through than I did about Ian getting his prize at the end. Because that’s what it was: Grace had no romantic inclinations toward him for the bulk of the story. He, however, had plenty toward her. What’s maybe most bothersome about the romance in this story, though, is less how it’s written and more that it’s the selling point of the book. The tagline even tells us that one boy may be able to mend what others have broken.

To me this says a lot about our comfort in listening to a girl’s story for the sake of her story. Romance sells, even if it’s not the point of the book. Even if it’s the weakest and most unnecessary part of the book. I can’t help but think that it goes back to what validates a girl’s story. Here? It’s a boy who can mend the broken girl. Weirder that it’s a boy who went too far and broke her heart.

There’s more than her heart at stake.

This paragraph is spoiler, so skip down if you don’t want it. For me, the ending wasn’t believable. The apologies came too quickly in the end. Even when the truth came to pass, the pacing was off. The community’s decision to apologize and seek Grace’s forgiveness never felt authentic nor real. It could have been stronger had the story ended when the truth emerged, rather than allow Grace’s peers to even have the chance to redeem themselves. It would have been a bit more damning and a bit more realistic to how rape culture — at least how we see it in media — plays out. The ending here fell into the same trap that the ending in Tease by Amanda Maciel did: too easy, too much a neat bow on a package that deserved better.

Grace as a character worked for me. She’s tough, but she’s also not entirely silent. She’s not willing to be degraded and she refuses to take anything from anyone. At this point, she realizes she has nothing left to lose because no one cares about her anyway. That hardened exterior makes sense, and much of it seems to delve into her interior, too. She was more compelling and engaging for me than Ian, though Ian’s development was not lacking or problematic itself.

Although I have a fair share of criticisms for Some Boys, this is an important book for teens and for the adults who work with them. Addressing rape culture head-on is something we don’t see enough of, and we certainly don’t get the perspective of the girl who has been a victim enough. These voices and stories are important because they’re precisely what the media and our broader culture chooses to ignore in light of the poor boys who have their futures ruined because of their crime. We don’t hear about the girl who has been violated and who has to live every waking moment knowing that what she says isn’t as important as the futures of those boys.

Pass this book along to readers who like realistic fiction and anyone who has read the likes of Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson or similar stories about rape and sexual assault. Although it’s not out yet and won’t be until next spring, this book will be in excellent conversation with Courtney Summers’s All the Rage, which also homes in on rape culture and the way our society protects boys but spits in the faces of girls who are made victims of sexual violence.

Some Boys is available now. Review copy received from the publisher. Patty will be stopping by on Wednesday to talk a bit more about the story’s inspirations and how she did her research. 

Addison Stone is legendary.

She’s the girl who isn’t just a budding talent, an artist on the rise. She is hot artist right now, no qualifiers necessary.

Except, Addison Stone is dead, and she died under some mysterious circumstances. No one knows for sure what happened, and what comes together in Adele Griffin’s The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone is the testimony of people who knew her as they attempt to put together the pieces of just what happened. How could such a young talent be gone?

The construction of this book is brilliant. Never do we get Addison’s voice because she’s dead; instead, we’re only allowed to get to know Addison through the voices of people who knew and associated with her, for better or for worse. Some of the people who get the chance to speak up loved Addison and wanted to see her get better and better with her art. Others, though, weren’t fans of Addison nor her life. Some, maybe, were downright envious. Bit by bit, Addison’s life comes together through these narratives, which are interspersed with both Addison’s art and photographs of her life.

Without getting Addison’s voice directly, it might feel like this book is a bit gimmicky. But Griffin manages to do something smart: she not only works with the set up to tell a huge story, but she simultaneously uses the format to comment upon the idea of art and artifice. Because who are these people to tell us who Addison is? What do their concepts of her as a person — and her as an artist — do to render a full person? Can they? What of their biases and connections with and to her do to getting at the heart of who she was?

Addison wasn’t without problems. Being talented came at a price, and much of it had to do with pressure. Internally, externally, and from the entire world around her. Being young and female didn’t help the situation. There’s much here about gender and about the unique struggles and situations that talented girls find themselves in and how that sort of lifestyle is destructive not because of the individual living it, but because of the way the world operates and puts expectations and demands upon girls. Further complicating the situation and tying right into that is the struggle Addison had with her own romantic life. She was (and was not) interested in more than one boy. The revelations those boys have about Addison and their personal relationships with her, because they’re so biased, tell us a lot about Addison and her interest in them.

We get the opportunity to see Addison’s growth through her adolescence, and we learn exactly how she came to hone her talents and find herself living the big city artist dream. But as much as it seems like it was a dream, bits and pieces come together to tell us as readers perhaps it wasn’t a dream after all. That perhaps there was something bigger warring within Addison.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone has a plot twist in it that comes through the bits and pieces we learn about Addison’s younger years. It’s spoiler to reveal what that twist is, but it might be fair to note that there’s a tiny bit of a supernatural element to the mystery of the story. That tiny bit of supernatural, though, may not be precisely what it seems to be. It might indicate a far bigger challenge to Addison and her struggles with creativity and the bigger questions that surround artists and creative inspiration. More, this delves into what might be the most provocative element of the story (and, as noted above, the bigger idea behind the book’s construction): the idea of performance. What is performance? Is it art? Is it life? Is it both? Who are the performers within one’s own life? At what point do you get to separate yourself from the work you do? Are you granted permission to do so, and if that’s the case, how do you protect that inner self from the bigger world taking in what it is you do and create?

Also, who owns a story once it’s out there? Is it the artist or is it those who enjoy the art?

The voices and perspectives in this book are unique and easy to navigate. Though we hear from a lot of people, it’s never confusing. Much of what emerges from the cast of characters is in itself the story: we get to see and experience what envy and love look, feel, and taste like without those things being described straightly to us. The immersive setup makes it easy to forget that this isn’t an actual story of a person who lived; this is a fictional account of a fictional character’s death.

Griffin’s novel is experimental but exceptionally successful at being so. This is the kind of book mystery lovers will want to get their hands on, as well any readers who are themselves creative and artistic and struggle with the internal and external manifestations of themselves and their art. It’s a complex, layered book, but it’s a lot of fun because of that. There are serious themes, but the way they come together and the way it’s put together and examined by the reader is the most enjoyable part. This is a book of pieces and characters, but it’s ultimately the reader who gets to put them together. Addison is an older character, so readers seeking stories at the upper end of YA or about teens who choose not to pursue traditional college/career paths will want to pick this up, as well. The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone asks more questions than it answers — and it begs to be discussed because of that.

If the book piques your interest, check out this great piece at School Library Journal between Liz Burns and Adele Griffin. Learning about how the book came together — and the girl who inspired the way Addison looks — is really fascinating.

For those who like a little story to your book covers, too, the cover of this book is not only fitting, but representative of an Addison habit you’ll come to discover. It’s a small detail, but it made the experience of the book that much more enjoyable.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone will be available August 12 — next Tuesday — from Soho Teen. Review copy received from the publisher.