Description

This searing and intimate novel in verse follows a sixteenyearold girl coping with sexual abuse as she grapples with how to reclaim her story her anger and her body in a world that seems determined to punish her for the sin of surviving

This is more than a story about sexual violencethis book is about race sexuality love and how anger can be a catalyst for healing
Gabrielle Union bestselling author actress and producer

Sixteenyearold Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her But theres more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at schoolwhispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean a girl who has had sex But what her classmates dont know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesnt recognize To the world around her shes been cast like the mythical Medusa as not the victim but the monster of her own story the slut who asked for it

Alicia was abandoned by her best friend quit the track team and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim Alicia struggles to keep up the walls shes built around her trauma At the same time her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out

This fierce and brightly burning feminist roarpaints a devastating and haunting portrait of a vulnerable young woman discovering the power of her voice her courage and her rage Samira Ahmed New York Times bestselling author of Internment and Hollow Fires