Review: All the Rage by Courtney Summers

Title: All the Rage
Author: Courtney Summers
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Release date: April 14th 2015
Source: Netgalley
Format: eARC

Rating: 4.5/5

Buy on: Amazon | B&N | BookDepository

The sheriff’s son, Kellan Turner, is not the golden boy everyone thinks he is, and Romy Grey knows that for a fact. Because no one wants to believe a girl from the wrong side of town, the truth about him has cost her everything—friends, family, and her community. Branded a liar and bullied relentlessly by a group of kids she used to hang out with, Romy’s only refuge is the diner where she works outside of town. No one knows her name or her past there; she can finally be anonymous.But when a girl with ties to both Romy and Kellan goes missing after a party, and news of him assaulting another girl in a town close by gets out, Romy must decide whether she wants to fight or carry the burden of knowing more girls could get hurt if she doesn’t speak up. Nobody believed her the first time—and they certainly won’t now — but the cost of her silence might be more than she can bear.

With a shocking conclusion and writing that will absolutely knock you out, All the Rage examines the shame and silence inflicted upon young women after an act of sexual violence, forcing us to ask ourselves: In a culture that refuses to protect its young girls, how can they survive?

All the Rage is a name that aptly describes what made me feel this book because it deals with the emotional consequences and repercussions of the sexual abuse of a girl, this is a powerful, raw and sad story.

The story begins with Romy attending her senior year without friends and being a victim of bullying by her classmates and old friends, because in the previous school year she was sexually abused by the golden boy, the son of Sheriff, he belongs to a powerful family and is the older brother of one of the most popular kids at her grade, so after she was raped, nobody believed in her and all of her friends turned their backs on her. So now, she goes to school trying to go unnoticed and she only wants to finish hers senior year without further problems, so she seeks refuge at her part-time job as a waitress in a restaurant in a nearby town, where nobody know her and where she can interact with other people, without been a target. And her life goes on like that until one day, a classmate disappears from a party and Romy must decide what to do with what she knew in her last conversation with her.

This book made me feel helplessness, anger, sadness, especially when no one believes in Romy, no one! .... And what made me more sad is how her parents react to the news and see how the sheriff's turns her in to a persona non-grata and how she isn´t safe of bullying in her town. Also as Romy sees herself as a dead girl.

There are some good secondary characters as well as villains and some who don´t know which side to take, but the main plot is Romy´s life after her sexual assault and how it changes again when Penny disappears and the mystery surrounding the events that happened the day she disappeared. It also has a bit of romance, but the story does not focus on it.

All the Rage is a raw, brutal, real and emotional contemporary novel. I highly recommended it. I´ll definitely read other books written by Courtney Summers.

Quotes

....how do you get a girl to stop crying?
You cover her mouth.

You know all the ways you can kill a girl? God, there are so many.

I don´t want sorry. It doesn´t bring dead girls back.