A powerful gripping story of a girl who's life is spiralled into a whirlpool most of us can't even fathom.
content warnings:: rape, sexual abuse and assault, anxiety/panic attacks.
Do not read the book if you are triggered by this and try to avoid the review as well.
To be honest I couldn't get through the book as one go, not because it was bad but it was too good. Ashley's characters came to life from the very moment I started the book and soon I too was spinning around along with the narrator Mara in the whirlpool. I soon realised that the book is not focused on Owen or his intentions but rather his impact, Mara’s processing and the trauma it creates take centre stage.
Mara, for me, was a perfect narrator and I related to her very easily and the writing of Ashley Herring was so good that I could feel the emotions that she felt and that is why it sometimes got so overwhelming that I had to put aside the book and find my centre again. This book talks about so many things that we need to talk about but are too afraid to from family and friendship to lots of tough issues, including rape, consent, sexual and gender identity, and teen relationships, and mental health, at least where I live.
I loved how everything seemed so innocent and so light until it didn't. I loved how Herring choose to open the book with a scene where everything seemed perfect and normal. I felt as if Owen was my twin and I had known him from the womb and when the ball drops on Mara I completely understood her reaction, her first instinct, how she couldn't see the caring, loving brother as someone who could sexually assault his girlfriend.
I can’t think about Owen. I can’t attach his name to Hannah on a hospital bed, bandages on her wrist, tears on her lovely face.
Neither could I when Mara's mother utters the words I wanted them to be just as untrue as Mara wanted them to be. I could also understand how complicated things were for her because as a girl and a feminist who also loved and cherished her brother. So when Mara’s best friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara’s world is turned upside down as the brother she thought she knew begins to trigger the very PTSD she’s been trying to run away from but seems to find a way to creep back in.
And I'm not sure I ever will recover from what Mr. Knoll did. Not fully. It's changed me forever, but changed doesn't have to mean broken
Mara as the founder of her school’s feminist club has never wavered from believing the survivors but when many of her classmates and family, including her fiercely feminist mother, publicly side with Owen and the school’s feminist club rallies around Hannah- She feels forced to choose between her family, friends and her own morals and beliefs.
Although Hannah/Owen story is given the centre stage there is a subplot that develops with and around it- Mara and charlie. Charlie’s experience as a closeted nonbinary teen still using feminine pronouns, Mara’s completely unconventional bisexuality and their daily struggles with stereotypes and bullying provide an excellent and much-needed representation of what an LGBTO+ goes through in their life. Although their relations in beginning made me want to smack Mara back to her senses and try to figure out their relationship so that at least she'd have that one good thing round the corner.
I wept not only for Hannah but also for Mara and the sibling relationship that will never be the same. It’s heartbreaking to see that Mara could lose the person she has been closest to all her life. But not only Mara but each character had been betrayed and lost someone close to them and be ready to feel it all yourself because there is no escape to the web of words that Herrings has laid for you. I could honestly ramble on and on about so many things that are in this book. It's a storm we need to face, a light we need to see and a stand we must take.
Even girls made of stars are captives, bound at the wrists and traded like property. Even girls made of stars aren't asked, aren't believed, aren't considered worth the effort unless they can offer something in return.Even girls made of stars buy into those lies sometimes.
This is definitely a must-read book, it's a beautiful, drowning, gripping story filled with characters with flaws, traumas and dynamics who are discovering who they are, how they fit into society and learning to love whoever they turn out to be.
Just... please read this book.
“We are worth the telling. We are worth the fight. We are worth a good life and love after.”
Written By: Kairavi Anjaria