I Stop Somewhere

Gr 10 Up—A devastating look at rape culture, bleaker but reminiscent of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. After years of being bullied at her old school, Ellie Frias is determined to blend in as she starts her freshman year of high school and she is mostly successful at being invisible. It surprises her when the wealthy and charming Caleb Brewer singles her out—but people are not always what they seem. After a brutal assault, Ellie is trapped as an unwilling observer, knowing she is not the only one and that justice is hard to come by. This is heartbreakingly realistic in illustrating the ways society fails girls in Ellie's shoes. The author is also very skilled at conveying the brutality of the attacks on Ellie and the other girls without gratuitous or sensationalizing detail. However, the teen's voice feels too mature for a freshman as naive as Ellie, even one looking back at life's hard lessons. Possibly due to the awkward structure and pacing, Ellie doesn't experience much change or growth and ends the story still blaming weakness in the victims for what was done to them.