Sixteen-year old Peyton Jones had it all: straight A's in school, the perfect boyfriend, and nothing to worry about but keeping her GPA up. Then one night her perfect world is suddenly ripped away from her. Everything she has ever known changes and she goes from having a perfect plan to watching her world crumble around her.
Steve Gibbons was the quarterback of his high school football team...until the new guy showed up and stole his spot, causing him to lose his chance at a scholarship. Football was his life and now he feels like he has nothing.
Drawn together after losing hope for their futures, Peyton and Steve become best friends, but as they grow closer, a colossal secret is revealed changing everything. Will Peyton be left to face her inevitable future alone, or can she trust enough to let someone else in?
Review
This is a hard book to review, the story itself had a lot of potential. We have the young girl Peyton who seems to have it all. We have Steve, the High School Quarterback, and we have Aaron who takes Steve's place as the High School Quarterback. And we have a horrible incident that is told in extremely graphic detail.
For me this book was unbelievable. Not because of what happens to Peyton, because that has happened and will happen sadly many times in the future. But because of her reaction to it all. Her reaction to Aaron was unbelievable, her reaction to Steve was unbelievable. And basically most of the things she does are a bit unrealistic to a girl in her situation.
I do NOT recommend this book to anyone younger than 15 or 16 because of the graphic scenes which are in this book. I also have to say that Peyton is NOT who I want my daughters to be like. Peyton is not a good role model in my opinion. Yes she was a good student, and the consequences that grow from the incident she made a choice that many pro-lifers will agree whole heartedly with, but how she dealt with the incident and how she reacted and what she did after just for me felt too fake. Yes I know this is a book, but if we want out children to read about rape we should at least give them a realistic type response to that rape.
I prefer open communication between parent and child and sadly this book did not have that in it. I also do not think that it was quite realistic a situation for a young girl to be all over a boy who she just met. The boy yes I can actually picture a young boy like Aaron, mostly because I have sadly known a few of them in my life and the damage they have done.
I think that the worst thing for me was I knew from the small story that Aaron tells about his own parents the type of child he was going to turn out to be, and I was actually disappointed in the Author for depicting him in such a classic manner as she did. *The Apple Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree* popped immediately to mind and when the Author had him do exactly that I just went "sigh!" It was just far too predictable.
But don't take my word for it, you may enjoy this story. I just warn you that it does have a fairly violent and graphic scene towards the beginning and it may confuse younger readers.
Details/Disclaimer: Review copy was provided to me in exchange for a fair and honest review. The free book held no determination on my personal review.
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