August 29, 2016
Consent workshops and crisis hotlines are part of today’s college experience, as are arguments over culpability for sexual assault and whether college administrators can handle these investigations. Padian (Out of Nowhere) avoids oversimplifying or stereotyping as she explores one such assault and its aftermath, telling a story that combines the most painful, everyday, and emotionally intimate aspects of college life. While it is Jenny, a shy first-year student, who is raped while at her first college party, Padian focuses on her roommate, Haley, and one of the accused rapist’s friends, Richard. Alternating third-person chapters let readers see their feelings on the developing situation and each other as their mutual attraction grows, even as they are drawn deeper into the investigation. Though Jenny and her pain can sometimes feel overshadowed by the separate romantic thread, Padian’s expansion of the story to include friends and family lends it visceral realism, allowing readers to imagine themselves in a similar scenario without asking them to envision themselves as either victim or perpetrator. Ages 14–up. Agent: Edite Kroll, Edite Kroll Literary.
July 15, 2016
A group of white college students becomes entangled in the investigation of an on-campus rape. Haley Dougherty, a freshman at MacCallum College, suffers her third concussion during a soccer match. Light and sound overwhelm her. So when her mousy roommate, Jenny James, returns to their dorm upset about a party at Conundrum, the notorious party house, she's intrigued but too out of it to take much notice. Elsewhere on campus, Jordan Bockus brags to his housemate Richard Brandt that he got some action from a freshman at the same party. That night at Conundrum soon takes over the lives of nearly everyone involved when Jenny files a formal complaint stating that Jordan raped her. Reluctantly, both Haley and Richard are recruited as advisers to Jenny and Jordan, respectively, during the investigation, putting them on opposite sides just as a flirtation arises between them. And on top of everything else, Jenny's fuzzy memories and Jordan's sense of entitlement make for painfully realistic barriers to the truth. Haley's and Richard's alternating perspectives, related in a tightly focused present tense, create a web of good and bad intentions as the investigation lurches on. All characters are realistically flawed and human as they struggle to do what's right. In the face of recent college rape trials, readers will be rapt and emotionally spent by the end. An important, devastating new perspective on an all-too-timely subject. (Fiction. 14-18)
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August 1, 2016
Gr 10 Up-A sobering, compelling, and realistic view of campus sexual assault. Haley is a college freshman whose life revolves around soccer. She's just been sidelined by a concussion when her roommate Jenny is raped at a party off campus. Jenny asks Haley to be her adviser in the campus investigation, giving her a front-row seat to the mounting pain and trauma Jenny goes through. Told from two points of view-those of Haley and Richard, a housemate of the accused-this work submerges readers in the aftermath of a campus sexual assault. Without feeling heavy-handed, the narrative lays out how the school administration handles the investigation and the various ways the students react. This is an important and, unfortunately, timely novel. In the midst of the details of the crime and its effects, readers are also given a sweet and genuine love story between Haley and Richard. This isn't just a book that all young men and women should read; it's gripping and human enough that many will want to. VERDICT Shelve and display alongside Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Courtney Summers's All the Rage.-Emily Moore, Camden County Library System, NJ
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from September 15, 2016
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* When her roommate Jenny accuses fellow MacCallum College student Jordan of rape, Haley becomes mired in a thorny situation. For one thing, Haley cannot be sure of the accuracy of Jenny's memory; she was the one who went to the wild campus party and got drunk. And try this complication on for size: Haley, who is serving as Jenny's advisor during the investigation, would really like to date Richard, the cute math tutor. But Richard turns out to be Jordan's advisor. Things are no simpler on Richard's end. He is suspicious of housemate Jordan's denial of Jenny's account, and that impression only gets heightened after Jordan asks Richard to forget how Jordan originally bragged about hooking up with Jenny. But how can he forget that? As the investigation progresses, what actually happened becomes increasingly, distressingly muddied. Told from the alternating, limited third-person viewpoints of Haley and Richard and interspersed with revealing snapshots of the night in question, Padian's latest boasts a swift, excellently crafted plot, exceedingly readable prose, and painfully relatable characters. It is especially surprising to find an affectionate involvement as believable as Haley and Richard's in the middle of a story centering on a rape investigation. Particularly relevant for high-school seniors and college freshmen.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)
July 1, 2017
Haley's college roommate accuses Richard's housemate of rape in this unusual take on the dual-voice mystery narrative that centers on the perspectives of those peripheral to the crime (Haley and Richard) rather than on the victim and perpetrator. Compelling and complex, the novel reads like well-crafted procedural television and deals with the absence of law when a college directs an investigation sans police.
(Copyright 2017 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)