I’m not sure how I feel about this one still. I liked it while I was reading it but I found it very forgettable. I did really like the characters and the story line.

*** 4.5 ⭐️ ***

Lavender experienced something in her young life that no one should ever have to go through, and she had no support network to assist her. Her family, school, and authorities were ill equipped to help, so she found herself doubting her own resilience.

I'll be honest, this book was tough to get through. The raw emotions of the victim (anger, hatred, sadness, confusion) and the smugness of the perpetrator were a lot to digest as a reader. At times, it seemed the discussion and thoughts of the FMC were well beyond the thoughts of a 15 year old but, at the same time, still juvenile. The juxtaposition of the girls in the counselling group and the FMC showed how far she has yet to go to heal; yet, the girls at her school and the FMC showed how far she'll go to fit in, even though something life changing had occurred (and not just to her). I was both disturbed and intrigued as to the direction the author would take for vindication, and the twist at the end was truly shocking.

Trigger warnings: physical abuse, suicidality

This ARC was provided by the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

A traumatic event happens to lLavender which gives her and others new purpose in life. A really interesting read, the less you know going in the better, great writing style. Try it.

Before I even start with the review a HUGE trigger warning for this book. This book heavily discusses rape, extreme bullying, suicide, drug use, mental illness and much more. So if any of these topics trigger you I beg you to not read this book because this isn‘t one where those topics are discussed in „passing“, this is basically about these topics so you‘ll read about them all the way through. So please make the decision for your own health and wellbeing if this is not something you can read, which is ok.

⁃ SPOILERS AHEAD -

This book is the story of Lavender, a black girl with vitiligo, also told in her POV. We start with her being at the police station to report a rape with the support of her parents. So yes we start with heavy topics and it also ends with heavy topics. Anyway, she reports the rape and hopes for justice. But like a lot in real life…this doesn‘t happen. He won‘t be prosecuted because there are doubts in her story for the police as well as not enough evidence since she went to the police and hospital a few days after because she just couldn‘t fathom talking about what had happened to her, which is a real thing. Now I won‘t go into much detail..but she tries to cope with not getting the justice she deserves and how to handle having to see her rapist at school. Not only that but the people at her school sadly don‘t believe her either because her rapist is a popular kid and she was always on the outskirts. Now they hate her even more and bully her even more calling her names like „whore“ and „slut“. She and her family are also heavily involved in their church where she now is questioned as well since she had sex before marriage, which is INSANE since she fucking got raped!!! But even there she is questioned and not believed. So this book really shows how it can go after reporting a rape..which is scary to think about. It‘s sad that this is a reality and it makes it so much harder to read, at least it did for me. Because I was so frustrated with everyone. She didn‘t just get bullied for „lying about rape“, which is bullshit BUT she also got bullied for her vitiligo, where one grown ass woman in her church even says „how convenient it is that she now turns white and that she chooses to turn white“, like what the fuck? Just google the condition she has instead of saying stuff like that. Like I said for me the book was so hard to read because of how frustrating it was. It was also a bit confusing when it comes to its writing but I think it was fitting since Lavender is the one telling us the story and I feel like that‘s how my thoughts would look like when telling this story. The only thing I personally disliked about the story was the ending, I could‘ve done without it or it being different. Still liked the outcome of the last thing..but not how it happened.

This book was interesting and very well-written. I would likely want to read more from this author and will recommend this to friends.

Not able to find the Goodreads adjacent book for this! Which is a bummer and I hope that they fix it before this book comes out!

I was not as invested in this book as I hoped to be, based off of the description, I knew that it would be graphic content. but I just did not enjoy the way that everything ended up playing out…..Lavender was taught, like many of us that when we need help we call law enforcement. Only, when she calls, she finds that nobody is willing to help her. This launches her into a downward spiral, of depression, self hate, etc. Until she finds out that she is not the only one who was treated like this and she decides to get revenge.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this early e-arc!

I got a free copy of Good Girls Die from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a book set a little after the main character has been violated by a person she had a crush on and went to his house to study and hang out with. The story starts proper right as the police are “interviewing” her about what happened, and how they go about it is apparently routine and has a reason behind it, but in no way would make anyone want to go and tell their story to them every, especially as the story goes on and all she suffers is grief as word goes around what happens, and all that people seem to focus on is the physical part.

The guy’s girlfriend corners her in school and calls her a slut and pulls down her pants. The principal then accuses her of causing the incident. Her parents try to help by taking her to see their pastor, and it basically becomes another interrogation, just with the added prayers for forgiveness and to forgive the guy who did it and to make sure she is in “good standing with the church” and not dallying with someone who wasn’t “good with the Lord”. Which made me wonder what sort of church she goes to. She only calls it “the church”.

But later some women tell her that she shouldn’t be teaching children or in the choir because she’s “not in good standing” and I started wondering if she was part of one of the churches often called cults like Jehovah’s Witness or The Mormons (who have a longer name now but no). Unless Evangelicals have started to do this sort of thing too. I was just thinking that she seems to still need God in her life, and she needs a Church where instead of people immediately condemning you because maybe you were promiscuous and “dating” someone you shouldn’t, instead they would offer ways of healing. Not that it would be perfect, but I have been to churches that at least try, especially if the other person isn’t part of the church.

As the story goes on, and main characters have less and less hope for any sort of actual justice. All she hears about is how she is causing trouble. How she did something wrong. She clings to anything that can be sympathy, and when she joins a support group, she’s that jerk who yells at someone who is just trying to open up about their own situation. Like she is that contentious person that you love/hate in most books about support groups. There’s more to it, but you’ll have to go to my blog to read it as it has heavy spoilers in order to discuss.

The protagonist also has a condition called vitiligo that slowly turns her skin more and more white, which brings contention mostly in her community, and more blame thrown her way. Once again, something she can’t control, blamed on her, where they ask if she’s “becoming more white to do those sort of things” and the racial insensitive jokes that the popular kids at school tell that she hardly seems bothered by because at least they’re supporting her.

In the end, while there is a lot of exploration of men and their control over how she’s viewed, I felt that there was a little too much focus on the women of the story. Which I understood because when something like this happens, you feel like the women in your life that have been victims themselves in one way or another, should be there to support you. Once again, more exploring in the spoiler part of the review, because wow, it there a lot to focus on here.

That said, there is a reason this book is marked as ADULTS ONLY!

Here are the Trigger Warnings I found:
Rape
Aftermath Rape
Victim Blaming.
Religious Abuse
Extreme Bullying
Abuse of Power
Murder
Suicide
Grief in Anger
No Justice in the Justice System

SPOILERS!!!!!!! SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s start with the obvious fact because it’s in the triggers and I think it’s clear in the book: the police drop the investigation and charges because she gave her statement and went to the hospital days after everything that had happened, and when she was at the hospital she acted as if she was far away instead of inconsolable and crying because these days we have to react a certain way after we’re hurt as well.

This comes up several times throughout the book. After she is assaulted, she stumbles away, only to go into his car as she needs a ride home where she’s assaulted again. No one can understand why she did this, she can hardly understand herself besides that something traumatic had happened and obviously she wasn’t thinking straight. Later she lies, let’s the girls who had been bullying her believe that she’d been drugged, dragged, anything to explain why that part happened because nothing she says is enough. Then the hardest part for me comes when a man who was falsely accused of raping someone shows up. They start fighting over whether he belongs there, but the weird thing is, it isn’t that his trauma is so much different and maybe a source of trigger to them to hear what they were accused of hurting the men in their lives, it’s that he’s a guy. Now, I could understand this if he was a rape victim, but mostly he seems to be there to bring to light that Lavender lied that she’d been drugged to keep the sympathy she found. This apparently is to explore how lying can hurt the man in the situation, but I don’t care. And in this book, I’m honestly not that interested in a dive into false accusations either. Now I would have been interested in an exploration of a male victim, but then we couldn’t have had the connection to Lavender that we did.

And once again, while we get an exploration and some justice for the men who do horrible things they do in this book, the focus is on the women and how they drag each other down after something horrible like this happens. Whether it’s the girlfriend who loves her boyfriend but has been assaulted by her boyfriend just like Lavender. She tears her apart after she tries to get her on the lie over the fact that she was only on Lavender’s side when it was convenient. She goes after the Principal of her school about how she’s a woman too and that she hopes she gets raped (as I said, Lavender gets angry). She talks to one of the women at her church about her faith (the least confrontational as she doesn’t speak with the ringleader, and I still think Lavender can have God and go to another church).

End of the Book Spoilers: At the very end, her rapist is found killed. Lavender thinks it’s her father, as he attempted it in the past, but it turns out that it was her best friend. Who then hands her a gun and says it’s time for Lavender to kill her Uncle, who her friend told her molested her as a child. Lavender agrees and that is the end of the book. The only disappointing part of this ending was that from the description of this book, I thought this would happen much sooner and actually be a concept explored, not a “twist”.

That said, no matter how this entire thing has been read, let me make one thing clear, I like this book. It’s a solid 4.5 rounded down to a 4 just because there’s so much potential that was there that hadn’t quite been realized. I read this book in one sitting. If this one thing the book did wonderfully, it was dragging me into the headspace of Lavender and her suffering. At times it feels like the entire world is against her, and I feel like that is exactly what the author was going for, and if it was, she did that beautifully.

That said, mind the triggers, and keep in mind that the story is probably very triggering in those areas as the writing is written from the point of view of someone overwhelmed with her situation so it can seem almost choppy and too much at times.

If you just need to be angry, to think about some harsh situations, to be reminded that people don’t always react as they “should” to situations then this is a wonderful book to read!

I gave up half way through this novel. The writing style of the author was not for me. The writing felt over descriptive to the point it was pulling me out of the story

Thank you Netgalley for giving me a chance to read this ARC for an exchange for an honest review.
Unfortunately I did not enjoy this.