Seventeen-year-old Indigo \u201cIndie\u201d Watson is a star soccer player at her school in Meadow Creek, Pennsylvania, and she\u2019s also the emotional cornerstone of her family. At a Saturday night party, Indie drinks too much with her friend and crush, \u201cBoy X\u201d; the next morning, she doesn\u2019t remember what happened, but she suspects that he raped her. She doesn\u2019t go to school and takes refuge in bed, too ashamed even to confide in concerned friends and family members. She feels that telling them would be too much of a burden on them, as they already have troubles of their own. Her older brother, Dylan, for instance, nearly failed out of school, and her father has self-medicated with alcohol ever since the death of Indie\u2019s beloved Gramps several years ago. Before long, the information spreads through the school. Later, Indie flees a soccer game, seeking refuge at Muddy Rivers Caf\u00e9 and hiding there after closing; there, she converses with strangers, some more benign than others. The Harry Potter references throughout the story feel obtrusive and dated. However, the narrative does efficiently examine ingrained misogyny in society and how it feeds into rape culture. Indie\u2019s narrative voice also rings true, as expressed in simple but evocative prose: \u201cWe look up, together. \u00ad\/ The birds \/ in the tree above \/ sing of spring \/ and what is \/ to come. \/\/ And I believe them.\u201d The narrative favors a clearcut message of female solidarity (\u201cAn invisible army of women stands with me\u201d) and doesn\u2019t address male or nonbinary rape survivors. Overall, though, this work offers a solid primer on the topic of sexual assault for a YA audience.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Seventeen-year-old Indigo \u201cIndie\u201d Watson is a star soccer player at her school in Meadow Creek, Pennsylvania, and she\u2019s also the emotional cornerstone of her family. At a Saturday night party, Indie drinks too much with her friend and crush, \u201cBoy X\u201d; the next morning, she doesn\u2019t remember what happened, but she suspects that he raped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}