Review: Rage: A Love Story

Title: Rage: A Love Story
Author: Julie Anne Peters
Publication date: September 8th, 2009

Summary: Johanna is steadfast, patient, reliable; the go-to girl, the one everyone can count on. But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs— it can’t give her Reeve Hartt.

Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna’s fluttering moth. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right?

In the precarious place where attraction and need collide, a teenager experiences the dark side of a first love, and struggles to find her way into a new light.

Review:
My review may be a bit biased because of my love of everything by Julie Anne Peters (and I also think the cover is gorgeous), but I found this book to be amazing and unique. Not just because it features a lesbian relationship, but also because of the realistic and somewhat scary glimpse it gives us of dating abuse. Nothing was sugar-coated, and it was intense to read. I could easily sympathize with Johanna and all of the situations that she had to deal with. The ending didn't quite wrap it up as well as I would have liked, but it was still satisfying. The writing was simple and nothing spectacular, but the story itself more than made up for that. I was actually a bit scared by the time I finished reading, just because of the intensity of it, but I will definitely read it again. It's a great book that shows how dangerous dating violence can really be, and that it doesn't only happen in heterosexual relationships.

Characters: 8/10
Plot: 9/10
Originality: 8/10
Writing: 7/10
Overall grade: B