You had me at Thelma and Louise. You had me at road trip. You did not have me at Young Adult.

I’ll admit, I am not a young adult. However, I can read young adult and still enjoy it. I felt like this was more unconventional topics so let’s call it YA, but the worrying and story is early YA, so let’s meet in the middle and just call it YA.

A lot of their decisions were cringe worthy, but I can tell it’s something a younger teen may do. But, i had to remind myself several times just how old these kids were.

Overall, it was okay. It wasn’t amazing, but I was able to finish it. Thank you MacMillan for the gifted copy

Love this fast-paced, smart novel. Adored the back and forth between the characters and highly recommend picking up for a summer read with an edge. Will definitely pick up more from this author!

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. Trouble Girls is pitched as a sapphic retelling of Thelma and Louise. I never saw the original film, but I definitely want to now. I have to start this review by saying that this story starts off with an attempted rape. There’s also some violence, murder, and so much degrading hate speak toward women that we see through the characters.
We follow Trixie and Lux who are on the run after Trixie stabbed a college man who was trying to rape Lux. They’re fleeing because they know what will happen if they go to the police. Lux comes right out and says that she’ll be questioned about why she was in a bar, what she was wearing, about how she was dancing with the person that tried to rape her. This book really obviously points out the flaws and issues that todays’s world has with believing the victim when someone tries to report being raped or sexually assaulted. There’s also a lot of anger. We only get Trixie’s point of view, so I can’t say how Lux was feeling, but Trixie was angry. I could absolutely understand her anger, but at times I couldn’t sympathize with it because the voices the girls made just kept making things worse and worse. I couldn’t help but think they should have just turned themselves in.
Overall, I wanted to like this book more than I did. I liked the romance between the girls. I liked their adventures while traveling, but I didn’t like many of the choices they made.

This book is a Thelma and Louise reimagining which I found to be a fantastic storyline. I do feel that the concept of the book didn't fully deliver for me but nonetheless I did enjoy it and it kept me captivated until the end. I felt the two main characters seemed a little too naive and sometimes immature but did enjoy their relationship.

3 Stars

I’m not exactly sure what to say about “Trouble Girls” by Julia Lynn Rubin. This is a sapphic YA contemporary reimagining (slightly) of Thelma & Louise.

Trixie and her best friend Lux are planning a weekend trip to just get away and relax by the lake. On the way they stop to at a college bar and find far more trouble than either anticipated. Afterwards, the girls flee and go on the run across the country in Trixie’s busted up car.

First off, this book has no chapters, it just continues on and makes stopping somewhat difficult. And this is a book where I needed a lot of breaks. I didn’t find it easy or fun to read at all. I found myself stressed, uncomfortable, and filled with anxiety and it only got worse the further the story went. But I also think this was done on purpose. “Trouble Girls” deals with sexual assault, victim blaming, and slut shaming to name a few. None of these should make you feel comfortable and Rubin really delivered on that point.

Another thing, both girls are seventeen and they continuously make bad decisions. I spent a lot of time yelling at my kindle with things like “please don’t do what you’re about to do” but alas, they did them anyway. At least they were consistent in their bad choices. They’re on the run and they don’t have a lot of money so sometimes they find themselves in situations where they don’t have many options. Sometimes you have to do what you have to do to get by and so I understood. But it didn’t make reading it any easier and I kept getting frustrated.

This is told in Trixie’s point of view and although it’s okay for Trixie, it left a lot of problems for Lux with me. I don’t feel we ever got really deep with her and I didn’t understand her at times. She seemed wishy washy at certain points and the only things I know about her for certain is that she likes makeup and taking pictures. There is a romance between them but I just didn’t feel it. I wasn’t even certain they liked each other until about halfway into the book. They just seemed like best friends. While I appreciated their love and devotion to each other, their romantic feelings never came through in a believable manner to me. I think I would have enjoyed it more without the romance. Who has time for love when you’re on the run from the police and starring in your own #MeToo movement?

In the end, I would suggest reading other reviews. I haven’t read too many other reviews so I’m not sure where I stand with this one relative to others. I wanted to like it more than I did but overall, I was just exhausted once I was finished.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Wednesday Books in exchange for an honest review.

3/5 stars!
I had some pretty mixed feelings about this one. I really loved the premise, I thought the author did a great job at setting the atmosphere of the story, and I can definitely appreciate that the story dealt with a lot of very important topics. That being said, I never really found myself getting particularly invested in the characters or the plot, and I wasn’t the biggest fan of the pacing. (I don’t think those things were necessarily badly done, they just weren’t really for me personally). Additionally, the lack of chapter breaks really did not work for me and made it a bit hard to actually read through the entirety of the book.

Ultimately, I don’t think this is a bad book by any means, but it didn’t particularly stick with me.

I was very excited to read this retelling of Thelma and Louise. By time I finished the book I wasn't as excited. For me, I didn't get the emotional connection that I like to have with the characters of a book. I loved how Trixie and Lux's relationship was constant. I liked their camaderie a lot more than their romantic connection. I wanted to badly to really feel it and be invested in that part of their relationship but I wasn't.

I was more into the part of the story that ended up sending them on the run from anyone and everyone and the fear that they had about getting caught and the consequences they'd suffer. They had gone to a bar (mind you they're underage) and an incident occurred that prompted Trixie to end up stabbing a boy. After that they ran and kept running with little money to see them through. As one can imagine, running from everything and having little money would lead many people to a crime spree, which happened with these girls.

I liked that it was a retelling but I also think I was possibly looking for similarities that I didn't find. What I thought did work well was the impetus that caused them to become teen criminals and the fear of getting caught eventually.

I would like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an e-ARC to read in exchange for giving my honest opinion.

Trouble Girls is a fast-paced and intense contemporary thriller-esque story about Trixie and Lux, two best friends who become fugitives and try to make their way across the country to escape something they did back home. They realize they cannot trust anyone but each other as they try to avoid getting caught, and as Trixie and Lux travel farther and farther from home with very little, they finally open up about feelings they had buried deep for so long.

First of all, can we please just talk about this cover for a minute? It's not fair that book covers get to be this beautiful!

I am really torn about this book. On one hand, I absolutely loved it. I loved the characters, plot, pacing, themes, and writing. However, I was also left with so many questions about what happened to Trixie, Lux, and their families after the unsatisfyingly satisfying ending (does that make any sense at all?). Trixie and Lux were both super strong characters who continually persevered even when it was hard. Their love and friendship kept them going day after day when they didn't want to anymore, and I admire those qualities in the characters. The book also addresses some really important topics relating to rape/sexual assault victims and the fact that they are so often not believed. Although I am upset the story ended without answering several questions (but maybe I'm the only one who feels that way), Trouble Girls was definitely a page-turner that had me hooked from the very beginning, and I cannot help but give the book four stars because of it.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books/St. Martin's Press for the ARC of Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin!

This was very readable, although I left feeling a bit "So what?" The vibe and some of the themes really reminded me of The Girls I've Been, although not quite as successful in pulling off a message about misogyny and kids growing up too fast. Mostly, it was just a stressful read with not a lot of payoff.

Trigger Warnings: Harassment, smoking, drinking, domestic violence, affair, discussion of dead parent, homophobia, sexual assault, knife violence, racism, homicide, police, theft, sex, blood, period, puke, internalized homophobia, overdose, armed robbery

Representation: Lesbian, POC, Queer

Trouble Girls is a queer, YA story of two girls who venture out for a weekend getaway which turns into a whole new adventure of running from the cops and trying to survive on their own. The girls become the face of a new #MeToo movement and learn to love each other during difficult times.

Overall, I absolutely loved this story! Although I wish it kept going! I felt this was an easy read, but had a lot of serious topics and became very heavy at times. I wish the “incident” was more clear and also “hogs” were better defined, but I felt it was very impactful that we all know who the narrator is describing. I felt the writing was effortless and the setting in the book was phenomenal! I also loved how messy the girls are! I think they portrayed teenagers perfectly, especially those in love.

I think the development of Lux could have been greater and her relationship with Trixie. I really wanted Trixie to have her happy ending but sometimes the relationship felt forced and sort of toxic.

What if Thelma and Louise were scared teenagers in love with one another? That's the intriguing premise of this book as best friends Trixie and Lux set out for a quick getaway from their stifling lives in Blue Bottle, West Virginia, only to find themselves on the run after Trixie stabs a guy who tries to rape Lux in a roadside bar.

So here's the deal, Trixie and Lux are both sympathetic, complicated characters, but they're also both extremely average teenagers: kinda dumb, and mostly impulsive and self-centered. I suppose there's an audience who'll enjoy a narrative where the heroines make increasingly poor choices as they drive west across America to the ocean (conveniently ignoring the fact that a) the Atlantic is closer, and b) the Gulf of Mexico isn't bad if you're just looking for a saltwater beach) but I personally found the going as grim as it was depicted, which does not make for the most fun read! The only bright spark in the proceedings plot-wise was Trixie and Lux's slow-growing best friends to lovers romance which was honestly lovely (oh, and the meeting with the triplets was quite nice too!)

Julia Lynn Rubin does throw in some great feminist commentary with the subplot of the stabbing victim and his connections back in Blue Bottle, as well as the public outcry both in favor of and against his mysterious assailants. I hope, however, that the finished version is a little more clear about the Feminazi bit at the 61% mark being in quotations, as that was quite jarring to read in the ARC format, which made it sound like Trixie was slagging off feminist protesters when she wasn't. I was also mostly pleased that this novel does not Bury Its Gays, but I did feel that the ending only added to the liminal quality of the entire book. Liminal is fine when the space is used to examine emotions free of the pressures of momentum and time, but the effect here was more one of being trapped in stasis as the girls struggled and failed to process what they'd done. And that's fine! That's realistic! They're teenagers and teenagers can be dumb as hell. But it's also not <i>interesting</i>, at least not to me. For all the adventures that the girls go through, it all felt very emotionally monotonal, with desperation being the overarching theme.

Maybe I'm just not the target audience for this book. Trouble Girls wasn't as much of a downer as I'd feared, but I really do think parts of it could have been lopped off in favor of telling us what happens next. Give me aftermath! Oh gosh, it's as if Vladimir Nabokov had decided to have Lolita end when the road trip did, that's what this feels like here (and is likely the only time or context in which anyone will ever compare this book to that classic.)

Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin was published June 1 2021 by Wednesday Books and is available from all good booksellers, including <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/15382/9781250757241">Bookshop!</a>

I was really looking forward to this one as it was described to be queer with a #MeToo movement. Unfortunately, this did not hit the mark for me. A small disclaimer before I start, this is a Thelma and Louise retelling and I had never heard of the movie until I got to this book so those who like the movie might love this retelling of it. Since I didn’t know anything about the movie or what happens I went into this with a blank slate.

What did I like?

Well, it’s queer so that was a plus. But, while reading I just didn’t find myself loving the main characters which in turn didn’t make me feel anything for the romance.

I also would like to say I love the cover and think it’s gorgeous and aesthetically pleasing. I think the colors work really well together and I love the details of the blood on the shirt and the symbol on the electric post.

Alright, what didn’t I like?

Well, a lot of it.

I found the main character, Trixie, to be quite annoying and even though the story is told from the first-person point of view I feel like I only know her and our other character on a surface level. While she has been through trauma and is rightfully mad at men and doesn’t trust them, she makes comments every other page about them being hogs. By all means, I’m not one to stick up for men but it just got to be annoying and I wanted to hear something besides all men are pigs. I also found it annoying how she acted like Lux was a manic pixie girl, which Lux does call her out on, but again it just became annoying. It felt like it was trying to appeal to teenagers as it is a YA book but it didn’t come across the right way.

Most of the decisions our two main characters made were quite agitating. While I understand they are young, they are still 17 years old and have an understanding of money. The way they continuously spent money on dumb things irked me to no end when they were supposed to be “on the run.”

Speaking of “on the run,” it never felt like they were actually on the run as the summary made them out to be. It also just felt like they were bating the police when they were posting online. It just felt like there was no urgency when there should have been.

Honestly, the events throughout their trip were just boring. They were meeting different people but it never had any importance. Most of the book was spent on the road which was a disappointment. I really thought we were going to get a story that had more to do with the media and how things unravel after the fact but we never got that. Since the summary talked about them leading a #MeToo movement I guess I wrongly assumed they would actually be leading it. . .when in actuality, they discuss with each other how society sucks.

I was just pretty disappointed overall. It wasn’t the book I thought it was going to be which might be why I didn’t like it as much. It also read extremely slow for me and I took ages to finish it. If you’re a fan of Thelma and Louise perhaps you’ll have better luck!

I'm really torn on this one - 2 stars rounded up for the love story.

I liked a lot of things about this story. I liked the reality of life on the run - being dirty, breaking out, being hungry, sleeping weird hours and some of the odd people you are forced to align yourself with. I loved the love story - their shared history, their fierce protectiveness, their handholding and being there for each other.

I also liked how the hog story and the fear after being attacked was handled. It's a rough topic and I thought this one was gritty and dark and true.

But for all these parts of the story I liked, there are a lot of slow parts. A lot of inner turmoil and driving, driving, driving. I wish I'd felt a bit more connected so the tortured thinking drew me in instead of leaving me wondering when something would happen. It was okay, I liked a lot of it, but didn't love it.

<i>A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.</i>

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review – thanks so much as always to Netgalley for sending this to me!

This Thelma and Louise inspired book follows best friends Trixie and Lux who end up on the roadtrip of a lifetime after murdering an attempted rapist in a club bathroom. On the run from their family, the cops, and a rapidly spreading media wildfire – half of which seeks to vilify them and the other half painting them as avenging angels – the further they drive away, the more bleak things seem to become. It’s the polar opposite of the hopeful road trip novel, a deep dive into the hopelessness and ennui.

Aesthetically, this book was incredible. The writing is visceral, claustrophobic, at time almost suffocating, as the reader is forced to share the hunted, cramped, stifling atmosphere of this hot car, the reality of life on the run with nowhere safe to run to. There are moments of almost Gatsby-esque decadence and indulgence that quickly give way to the messy reality of the situation, and the feelings it creates are so intense that it honestly shocked me. It made the book quite difficult to read at times because it was so successful in evoking its chosen atmosphere.

However, I almost think it maybe succeeded a little too well in this. The feelings of frustration and often intense boredom and irritation that the two girls experience was echoed in my reading experience, as all the descriptions of life on the road quickly started to wear on me. In addition to this, the plot feels like it’s going around in circles in much the same way that the girls do. We meet characters who seem to have little to no impact on the plot or the novel as a whole and are just kind of there, while the characters who are important don’t get fleshed out enough. Trixie has the self-awareness to realise that she’s been projecting this idealised, Manic Pixie Dreamgirl type personality onto Lux, but I feel like even once the mask slips, it only does so aesthetically – we see physical ugliness and vulnerability and realness, but not as much actual personality as I was hoping for. The best friends to lovers romance didn’t really ring true to me, and I was never invested in their romance. It was one of those books that felt like it was throwing handfuls of glitter in my face to emphasize how pretty and evocative the writing is, but if you scratch past the surface, all you get is more glitter. I think it would’ve made a great movie – I could see the long shots, the artistic zooms – but as a book it never really went deep enough to satisfy me.

Overall I appreciated what this book was trying to do, but for me it favoured style over substance and I was left feeling ultimately desolate, frustrated, and kind of let down. 2.75 stars.

TW: assault, rape of a child, violent and misogynistic language, violence, drugs.

This book is much darker than I thought it would be. A Thelma and Louise reimaging with the darkness of Riverdale, Trouble Girls is about what it takes to survive when we are so broken.

Trixie and Lux are teenagers in a slow, sleepy town. Lux is aching to get out and be a photographer while Trixie is just aching for Lux. And to not be harassed by men she calls "hogs". Right from the start the reader knows that something happened to Trixie but it takes a bit for that back story to unravel. When Trixie and Lux set out to spend a weekend on a lake, their adventure is stalled when Lux is assaulted and Trixie kills the man who did it. On the run, they try to survive while healing the broken parts of themselves.

"Sometimes I just want a right to exist, to look however the hell I look and not feel a damn bit of shame."

I was expecting dark but this was much darker than I thought and in many ways hard to read. Trixie and Lux are in extremely dangerous situations, have to deal with aggression and assault, and there are many instances of verbal assault and violence that made my stomach turn. This is not a happy go lucky read: it is so sad and exhausting and brutal. I thought Trixie was more fleshed out that Lux but I really enjoyed seeing their friendship and their love flourish in such dire situations. But I wanted to see more of their love because that was the most beautiful part.

Overall, I enjoyed this but should have read TW prior to starting because it is definitely a sad, violent, and hard read.

Thank you to Wednesday Books for my copy to review!

This story has been hard for me to formulate my thoughts on. I finished this almost a week ago and I still am not sure of what exactly to say to get my thoughts across.

I did really enjoy reading about the progression of Trixie and Lux's relationship. They seemed like a great pair together and I found it interesting to watch them grow and learn.

With that being said, and while I loved the representation that this book contains, I also found myself a bit bored throughout. They spend most of this book "on the run" yet it never really felt like they were ever in real danger of being caught. Then the ending of the book just seemed so abrupt and all the high stakes happened in the last 40 pages.

All in all, this was a quick and easy read, with great representation and I would still recommend.

Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin is a retelling of the popular ’90s film, Thelma and Louise. Rubin puts a fresh and timely spin on this classic film by making it a queer YA retelling that is set in present day during the #MeToo movement.

The story follows Trixie and Lux, two young women who have been best friends forever and who are looking to escape their dead-end little town for a few days. They pack for a weekend getaway and make a pitstop at a college bar on their way out of town. The night goes terribly wrong and in one violent moment, Trixie and Lux’s lives are changed forever.

Just as in the original tale, the author does a wonderful job of painting both women as sympathetic characters. Trixie is an only child who has the huge and often overwhelming responsibility of caring for her mother who is suffering from what appears to be dementia. It’s a huge weight to carry and Trixie is exhausted. Lux also has a less than stellar home life. Her mother is gone, and her overbearing father treats her as if she’s his maid and babysitter. When their one chance to get away and relax and have fun is torpedoed by a pig who can’t keep it in his pants, it’s hard not to root for them when they fight back.

The story becomes an action-packed thrill ride as Trixie and Lux flee west hoping to escape from both the law and the media. The media attention is unexpected as Trixie and Lux find themselves at the center of the #MeToo movement when protesters become aware that their attacker has a track record of similar incidents in his history. There are just as many people cheering the girls on as there are people who want them to pay for what they did.

The writing is taut and sharp, making this a real page turner for me even though I was very familiar with the original Thelma and Louise and could somewhat guess where the story was headed. I do wish it hadn’t followed the original storyline quite so closely, but what did make it a fresh take though was the journey of self-discovery that we get as Trixie and Lux gradually realize they have more than just friendly feelings toward each other. It’s a beautiful and hopeful journey tucked into what is otherwise a pretty dark tale.

If a fresh take on Thelma and Louise sounds like something you would enjoy, I highly recommend Trouble Girls.

Scheduled to post 6/12/21.

What I liked best about Trouble Girls is the gritty, dirty feeling to it once the girls are on the lam. The shady motels, resorting to stealing to get by, picking up a hitchhiker, it just all felt very 90s and I really liked that nostalgic feel even though it's a contemporary story. The girls end up destroying their cell phones very early on, which leaves them without a connection to the world, or to GPS, so they have to navigate their lives and the roads the old fashioned way. That's probably what made it feel so 90s nostalgic despite it's modern day setting.

It's also a story about teenage girls being unapologetically teenage girls. They felt very real in their actions and decisions (as in not making the best decisions when in a stressful situation) and how they groped around their feelings for each other. It just felt very authentic without being overblown, despite the Thelma and Louise motif running throughout the story.

It's a great story, super compelling, that kept me turning pages. I wanted to know what would happen to these girls next, what bad decisions would they make, how much deeper would they dig their graves. From a pacing standpoint, it was great.

I just wasn't floored by the story as a whole, though. It didn't blow my hair back the way, say Body of Stars did. It felt very obvious in its message, which isn't a bad thing (and with the Thelma and Louise pitch, was also incredibly obvious). But it didn't lay out anything new or groundbreaking or anything that hasn't been seen before that really hit me like other books recently have. Maybe because Lux and Trixie were so detached from most of the impact of their actions, and the societal effect that the blurb amps up exists, for the most part, in their periphery.

It's a good story; it's just not mind-blowing. I was rooting for Trixie and Lux, hoping they made it to California their entire road trip and they finally got to see the ocean. I was really hoping nothing unsavory happened to them, and I was hoping everything ended up okay. Thing is, the ending is pretty open-ended. With the ending, you know what's going to happen in the short term, but as for how Lux and Trixie are going to fare, you have no idea. It's kind of anti-climatic from that respect. But it's an intriguing, compelling story that will keep you reading, if nothing else.

3.5

You ever have expectations for a book based on what the retelling aspects are meant to be and then that hurts you? Well, that was me and this book. It just felt like it did not do much with the story it was playing with and ended up falling flat for me especially on the character connections to both myself as a reader and each other.

Trouble Girls by Julia Lynn Rubin is a queer—and pretty dark—YA reimagining of Thelma & Louise so it was a perfect book to start off Pride Month!

Trixie and Lux have been best friends forever. Lux is fun and bubbly (aka Geena Davis’s Thelma), despite pressure from home to take care of her younger brother. Trixie is more hardened (aka Susan Sarandon’s Louise). Caring for a mother with dementia, Trixie clearly has some bad history with men, and she’s pining after her best friend Lux. Not to mention the fact that she lives in a small town that is not necessarily LGBTQ+ friendly.

The books starts much like the movie, with the girls heading off on a girls camping getaway, but ending up a heap of trouble at a bar and running away from their crime.

I was surprised at how closely this one stuck to the Thelma & Louise script. The possible burgeoning romance between the characters was a twist, but a lot of the themes and plot points were the same, although as I say that I realize it’s been years since I’ve actually seen the movie.

Things I liked: The book was beautifully written, and I was so impressed with the author. I liked the character’s growing awareness that they ran leaving the burden of talking about sexual assault and trying to get justice to minority characters we never really meet.

Things that didn’t click for me: I didn’t feel like we got to know the main characters as much as I would have liked to in what was basically a very character-driven deep dive story. I also keep questioning their decisions, although I hundred percent own that I am an adult reading a book written for teens, so this might not be a valid criticism. Still, I found myself wincing throughout at the bad choices they made over and over.
I’ve seen this one recommended for fans of Courtney Summers and I completely agree that if you like a gritty, unsettling book, and don’t mind things not being totally wrapped up in the end, this book should be on your list. It came out Tuesday.

Thank you to @netgalley and @Wednesdaybooks for an ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.
Have you seen Thelma & Louise? Have you been longing for a retelling?