Tag: rape

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Review: What Happened That Night

Rating: 3 Stars

What Happened That Night by Sandra Block is the story of a young woman whose life was changed one night when she was brutally assaulted in her college. She dropped out of college, gave up on her dreams, and lives with constant fear and rage. What frustrates her the most, is that she has no recollection of the assault. She has no idea who the perpetrators were, and no one to blame but herself, leading to suicidal thoughts and sever panic attacks.

As Dahlia tries to pick up the pieces of her badly fragmented life, working as a paralegal, with tattoos, piercings, and dyed hair as a mark of her reaction to the lost memories, her life takes another unexpected turn. A video of the barbarous sexual assault is posted online. Now that she knows exactly what was done to her, her rage threatens to get out of control, and she decides to make the rapists pay.

The details of the assault are very painful to read, and you find yourself rooting for Dahlia and her plan for revenge. What brings the book down is the juvenile way in which it all happens. The writer takes some pains to establish how successful these men are, yet the plans to bring them all down seem like they have been thought out by high school kids. I was disappointed in how easy it all turned out to be.

I liked the characters of Dahlia and James, and the fact that the book highlights the very real issue of campus rapes and how lives are destroyed by these vile acts. I wish the twists had also been worthwhile, if not the actual revenge scheme. It looked like Block had a hard time keeping any secrets, because the truth about both James and Eli was evident from quite early on in the book.

I don’t like saying it, but by making revenge look so easy, Block has somewhat trivialized the struggle that rape survivors have to go through. It was extremely painful to read about what happened to Dahlia in the immediate aftermath of the assault where she had to live through people putting the blame on her , and no one understanding the trauma she was in. If only it was as easy for everyone in the same situation to take revenge!

In the end, this turned out to be an average book even though it looked so promising to me.

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Review:Luckiest Girl Alive

Rating: 3 Stars

No matter what you think when you see the cover and read the blurb, Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll is NOT a thriller. I went in expecting a thriller, and kept waiting for the twist which never came. I had seen the book on bookstagram, and as always, avoided reading reviews, which is why I never knew what genre the book belonged to. Not to say that I don’t like reading other genres, I do. And this book is not too bad.

I admit I am very squeamish reading about sexual assault and rape, especially so when it is a teenager who is later ostracized for it. It was something that made Bear Town almost unbearable for me even though I was so invested in the characters. This book also made me uncomfortable and angry, but I couldn’t connect with the characters at all.

Ani FaNelli was a character I had really high hopes of; she came off as cunning, ruthless, and a bit twisted in the beginning, and I was waiting for the moment when everything will go to hell because she was intent on taking revenge. So it was a shock when suddenly in the last quarter of the book, she became a victim and lost all the characteristics that Knoll had built over the course of the book.

The story is fast paced and keeps you interested. The past is such a big presence in the present that you want to find out what happened quickly. The author, however, makes you wait for the whole story, which is a testament to the author’s skillful writing. What doesn’t come up to the mark is the climax, or in this case, the lack of one. It is like suddenly it’s all over and we should sympathise with the poor victim, and isn’t it great how everything worked out to prove how strong a woman she is.

After writing in such detail about everything past and present, Knoll suddenly decided to end the book on a high note, with Ani becoming the ultimate hero of her own story. I just felt that there was something missing in that last quarter of the book. I wish I could have enjoyed the last part as much as I enjoyed the rest of the book.

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Review: Anatomy of a Scandal

Rating: 2 Stars

Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan is a book I’m not too sure about. I have mixed feelings about this acclaimed courtroom drama that has everyone singing its praises. I gave it 3 stars on Goodreads, because I can’t see anything extraordinary in it. We all know that when it comes to legal thrillers, John Grisham is the master of this genre. There was a time when I used to read every book that he wrote. Compared to those, this is a very tame affair.
Warning: This review contains spoilers, and is reflective of how I felt while reading this book. Not everyone is expected to agree with me.

When James Whitehouse, a junior minister and the Prime Minister’s closest friend, is accused of rape by a colleague, his wife Sophie, knows that he is innocent. He may have indulged in a short-lived affair with the woman, but he was no rapist. So, even with all the anger and hurt about the affair, she is willing to stand by her husband when he needs her the most.

QC Kate Woodcroft knows that Whitehouse is guilty, and she will do everything to prove it in front of the jury. She might come off as insensitive and unfeeling when it comes to grilling witnesses, but she knows how to sway a jury, and she feels very strongly about making everyone see the truth.

As the drama unfolds in the courtroom, I couldn’t help but feel bored. The book was about fifty pages too long. There are no real surprises. I was able to make the connection between Holly and Kate almost from the beginning. I knew what had happened to Holly quite early on too. And the secret being alluded to since the beginning of the book, the secret that Sophie knows, is not as explosive as the writer would have you believe.

In the middle of all this, is something that I really didn’t like. There was this general thread that men are incapable of being faithful, as evidenced by both Sophie’s and Kate’s fathers, as well as Sophie’s husband. The thing that had me feeling uncomfortable was the tone of acceptability in the book. There are many books about women who won’t leave their cheating husbands because of one reason or the other, but those books make you feel that what these women are doing is wrong.

This book felt like the author was implying that staying with a cheat is better than not having a man in your life. Sophie was like all women in such situations, not wanting to leave but not wanting to stay either. So, there isn’t anything blatant which I can pinpoint, but I got the general feeling that as Sophie justifies James’s actions, the reader is also supposed to do so.

And then there is the whole underlying lesson of not taking anyone to court for sexual assault or rape. Because that is what I learned from this book. If Kate had won the case that she was prosecuting at the beginning of the book, or if she had sounded optimistic about the outcome of any such cases, it could be said that she was up against a master and she lost. But she lost the previous case, and keeps dropping gems like, “Juries are keen to convict the predatory rapist….yet when it comes to relationship rape, they’d really rather not know, thank you very much.” She keeps telling us that she wins cases, unfortunately we don’t see much evidence of that. Even in the courtroom scenes, she never comes across as the brilliant QC she is supposed to be.

So after reading 350 plus pages, we come to know that nothing much has changed, except the lives of the women involved, while the man is free to go back to his life, both public and private. There is hardly any mention of what happened to poor Olivia after the trial; Sophie is a shallow woman all through the story, with the sole aim of landing and then keeping a husband in her life; and Kate is destined to be alone and unloved because she chose to have a demanding career.

For a fan of outstanding courtroom dramas like To Kill A Mockingbird, A Time to Kill and Pelican Brief, this book is very mediocre, with forgettable characters and a weak storyline.

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Review: Beartown

Rating: 4.5 Stars

After the last book mail I got, I had made a To Be Read pile and decided to read the books starting from the top. Beartown by Fredrik Backman was at the bottom of the pile because of its size. When I got disillusioned by a couple of books from the top, I was very tempted to cheat, take it out from the bottom and read it before the other books. After all, this book was written by the same author who wrote A Man Called Ove, and it was sure to be the pick-me-up I needed after reading some very mediocre books.

I’m glad I didn’t give in to my impulse. I’m glad I only read it after I had finished the other books in the pile. Infact, I should have waited a couple of more days before reading it. Because I still have a couple of reviews to write, and I sat down to write them too, but this book has completely, utterly left me unable to think of anything else! It has destroyed me. I have begun to question my sanity in not reading the reviews first and being blindsided by this heavyweight of a book.

Beartown is a very small town, becoming smaller by the day, with no prospects and no future, except for the junior ice hockey team. This team is what represents hope for the town, and this team is what the whole town revolves around. The book starts very slowly, as we get to know all the characters. And there are a lot of them, a whole town’s worth.

Normally, I give up trying to read a book long before I reach even a 100 pages, if nothing has happened. I don’t know what made me go on reading when all I wanted to do was put the book down and forget about it. I’m still not sure if I’m happy about sticking to it. I don’t like being so attached to fictional characters that I can feel their pain in my heart. It sucks.
Fair Warning: This book deals with rape and its aftermath.

The rape, when it happens, is shocking and violent, and sadly, echoes so many real-life incidents that you just stop reading for a while and need a moment to absorb it all. This, however, only leaves you feeling angry and wanting justice. What follows is what is really heart wrenching. For it reflects what every survivor has to go through. When a boy tells her to go to the police, the girl says it doesn’t matter because no one will believe her. Because the rapist is a hockey player. And Beartown is a hockey town.

Everything that happens in the book from that point on, is just how small towns, small hockey towns, small hockey towns that have nothing else to look forward to, react when their start player is accused of a crime by a girl. Nothing that happens is out of the ordinary. It is what would happen in any small town in the world where such a crime was committed. And this is what makes it so sad and heartbreaking.

What makes it all bearable is that when a family, already devastated by a tragedy, stands up against a whole town, there are still people who are brave enough to stand with them. Even if they are so few that they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, there is someone who has enough guts to stand up and tell everyone how wrong they are, there is someone who believes the word of the girl over that of the hockey star, there is someone who eventually, at the expense of everything they hold dear, is willing to tell the truth. This, after all, is also the story of individuals with big hearts and guilty consciences, individuals cut from the same cloth as the rest of the town, but with a different thinking.

In the end, you’re left feeling cheated, because there is no neat end to the chain of events that started on that one night. We’re given some glimpses of the future, and we know that life has gone on for everyone involved, and to some extent, it seems that justice has been served. Just not in the way you wanted.

Reading this book was a gut wrenching experience for me, and then I found out that there is also a sequel! No. My heart cannot stand it. I don’t know if I can gather enough courage to read through another book like this, but this will definitely remain one of those books that made me break down in tears. I’m almost afraid to think what Fredrik Backman has in store for this little town next.

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