A deep and dark take on the evil that lurks in boys and the girls who are their unknowing victims. I actually had to take a few breaks while reading this book due to Rebecca Stafford's ability to transport me into the life of Rabbit. A life full of heartache and betrayal. This will be a difficult read for most, but its such a worthwhile experience. Thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you to HarperCollins Children's Books | Quill Tree Books and NetGalley for providing an eARC for a honest review.

It’s not often I start a review with trigger warnings, but this one needs them. Rabbit lost her mother to cancer and tried to take her own life with the remnants of her mother’s pills. Rabbit also learns that her ex-boyfriend, Richard, who almost raped her, has naked pictures of Rabbit and two other boys. She then discovers that it wasn’t just her, and it wasn’t always just pictures. So please be aware if any of these are triggers for you.

I picked this book up because it takes the above scenario, and adds in feminine rage and revenge, a sisterhood of wrath and fury, and I’m a sucker for a good revenge plot. So, let’s begin.

“The point of football is to teach boys to ignore pain, their own or someone else’s, to listen to authority, and to move as one. It teaches Us versus Them.” […]

“Boys are taught how to do violence as a group and then they teach each other how to cover it up. It’s how they know they’re men. We aren’t. We’re only taught to see each other as competition. We end up unprepared.”

Rabbit is not a likable character. She’s weak and distant; she’s selfish and angry and lost. Her mother recently died from cancer and her father is drinking himself to death. Bills are piling up, and Rabbit can only live in the anger and despair. Even her own suicide attempt wasn’t enough to wake her father up — not that that’s why she did it. She has no friends, no support system, and no hope. It’s simply one day after the other, down a road that never ends.

And then Juliet enters Rabbit’s life. Juliet who is beautiful, dramatic, mischievous, and arrogant, strong and proud and vain and … and everything. Juliet who picks Rabbit out of all the girls in town to be her friend; Juliet who takes one look at the way Rabbit looks at her ex, Richard, and slams a lunch tray into his face before simply whisking Rabbit away. No one has ever stood up for Rabbit like that, not even Rabbit herself. And it’s so easy to fall into Juliet’s spell, to let her make all the decisions, to give her all the power, because it’s so much better when Juliet is paying attention to her.

Juliet is hot and cold, as mercurial as the weather. One moment it’s laughing and swimming, another it’s leaving Rabbit and her friend Sarah in the middle of the lake to swim back to shore while she vanishes with the boat. And when Juliet hears Rabbit and Sarah’s stories — how Sarah was getting more beer for Richard one night and came across a photo of Rabbit, half naked and being carried by Richard’s two friends — she isn’t surprised. She’s angry.

“That’s how they get away with it,” Juliet said, “and that’s how we’ll get away with it, too. They know you’ll feel stupid and ashamed. That you’ll run the scenario over and over in your head trying to get it to come out not your fault. But you always decide it is. So, you con yourself and pretend it didn’t happen because you can’t trust that telling anyone will help.”

Juliet manipulates Sarah and Rabbit, pitting them against each other, all while goading them on with the pictures. Pictures of Sarah, shirtless and unconscious, being caressed by Richard while one of the other boys takes pictures; and the other girls, girls Sarah and Rabbit know from school. Juliet flirts with them, coaxes them, lures them closer so that they’ll go along with her plan, works them up to feel her own burning rage. It’s toxic, it’s poisonous, and Rabbit eats every bite.

However, it’s also unsustainable. Juliet isn’t going to just let the boys walk away with a stern word. She wants more, so much more, and Rabbit … Rabbit doesn’t want to think about it. She wants to be a passive witness, to have all the responsibility taken from her, so that she can claim — if only to herself — that whatever happens isn’t her fault.

This is a grim book, but the plot is mostly a framework for the character study of Rabbit. Of her crawling out of her despair and her isolation, and how the love of her parents helped give her a foundation solid enough that even this wobble won’t shake her from her foundational self. For me, though, the book didn’t quite stick the landing. While I understand why the author made the choice they did, I’m left wanting something else. Not in a bad way, just in the way I get, picking at a book I like because I want it to be perfect.

Still, while this book won’t be for everyone, I enjoyed it. The writing is strong, Rabbit’s voice comes across painfully clear, and the pace is excellent. It spends just enough time on the scenes to build the characters, without lingering on the scenes of sexual violence — because this isn’t about that; it’s about the girls who have to live with what happened to them.

I was really looking forward to reading Rabbit & Juliet because the synopsis sounded great, but sadly, the execution wasn’t, in my opinion. You can see where this book draws its influences from but it unfortunately falls short in comparison. I only finished the book because I didn’t want yet another DNF this year. I was hoping something amazing would happen in the end that would change my entire opinion of the book, it did not.

I honestly didn’t like any of the characters. They felt very flat and they were all awful in their own ways. If they happened to be complex, I wouldn’t mind this, but even Juliet was two dimensional. I’d love to talk about this in more depth but that would be difficult without giving major spoilers. Rabbit’s instant and complete obsession with Juliet got old after a while too.

Another area I don’t want to spoil is how this book ends, but I do need to comment on how satisfying it is. You don’t learn the outcome of the biggest event of the book and that’s really annoying. What was the point of this story? Nothing really happens and a lot of the more ‘action-packed’ scenes are told in passing in the past tense.

The end part that talks in the style of a movie montage would be less awkward if that happened more often throughout. The chatty style narrative is not used at any other point during the book, so it seemed very out of place.

I’d hoped for a lot more from Rabbit & Juliet but sadly, I found it a little boring. That might not be the case for you though, so I would recommend checking this out if my review hasn’t put you off and you think the synopsis sounds interesting.

Promising Young Women meets Do Revenge in this story about a young woman who discovers a dark secret about her ex while also falling for a new girl who might have darker tendencies than she realized. Rabbit is a seventeen year old girl who is dealing with the grief of losing her mother. She's still grieving and her life isn't made any easier by the fact that her ex Richard, is her small town's golden boy who is also an unrelenting stalker who did not take their breakup well. Rabbit also doesn't have any friends and her dad is an alcoholic... to say her life is pretty miserable is putting it lightly. Yet everything changes when she goes to her grief meeting and meets Juliet.... a gorgeous sarcastic girl who captivates Rabbit. Then Rabbit's ex-best friend Sarah (who happens to be Richard's current girlfriend) shares a terrible secret about Richard and his crew.... one that impacts Rabbit.... and what the boys do to unsuspecting girls at parties. Juliet takes the charge and demands justice... a justice that only gets more violent with every person. Rabbit finds herself falling for Juliet, yet the more blood Juliet calls for the more Rabbit begins to question if she fell for another terrible partner.... only time will tell. This book deals with a lot of things from grief to the mistreatment of women and the culture of it. It's got a Promising Young Women kind of vibe and I did like that the girls all worked together to get their justice but something just felt like it was missing a bit from the book for me. It's not a bad book in any means it just didn't catch my interest compared to other stories that I've read that had a similar topic/subject matter. If you want a book thats similar and has a sapphic romance as well as well as a super satisfying ending, I'd recommend Serpentine Valentine (it is college age based though). I would say do read this though if you want a sapphic-esque romance with a story about dealing with the mistreatment of girls and girls seeking their revenge!

Release Date: September 24,2024

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and HarperCollins Children's Books | Quill Tree Books for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!!

This was full of suspense and had a lot going for it. I really enjoyed Rabbit’s character. Juliet was very much manic pixie dream girl and I had my suspensions about her from the beginning. I love books about being getting back at your abusers, and this one took it in an interesting new way. The end was a little stale but other than that I really enjoyed the read.

I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I was blown away by this book written by a debut author. If you loved Moxie, Foxfire, The Wolves are Waiting.... read this book when it comes out 9/24/24.

I'm not going to give the plot away, but there's smidgens of foul behavior of boys with Polaroid pictures, alcohol and possibly drugs. The main character, Rabbit, as her friends call her, mother died. Her dad is a functional drunk. She's attempted suicide. Then she meets Juliet, who shakes up the small Georgia town.

This story takes place in the summer before senior year of high school. The unpredictable nature of Juliet's character makes the story interesting. But she takes the thirst for revenge too far for Rabbit to handle. The ending was a little anti climatic to me. Otherwise, this would have been a 5 star book, but the writing was sharp and strong. I will definitely keep this author's future books in mind. A riveting debut.