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White Rabbit: 12/08/19
White Rabbit by Caleb Roehrig is blurbed as a retelling of Catcher in the Rye with a gay protagonist. Rufus Holt is still trying to get over a messy break-up with Sebastian when out of the blue his ex reappears and says they need to talk. At the same time, his sister calls saying she needs help. Sebastian offers to drive Rufus and together they find her alone with the horribly murdered body of her boyfriend in a summer home where a huge party had been thrown the night before. This set up if everyone was older by five or ten years would be fine. It would be believable. But this ridiculous book is marketed as YA. It's not the sex and it's not the drugs. It's the agency — the freedom these mid-teens have. Rufus and his sister are sixteen and fifteen but they have the freedom of adults. These so called teens don't talk like teens. They don't act like teens. They talk and act like jaded late twenty-somethings playing at being teens. This stupid book reads like more like novelization of Twin Peaks (which had twenty-somethings playing teens) with a gay protagonist. There is literally nothing about this book, minus their ages, that makes this book YA. One star Comments (0)
1997-2024 Sarah Sammis |
