SuitabookBully
Penelope Douglas
- Reading
- Consider checking in around the bullying and mature-content elements, especially if humiliation or coercive behaviour may be difficult.
- Themes
- Responding to sustained bullying: Tate returns after avoiding a former best friend whose humiliation, exclusion, gossip and pranks have affected her throughout high school. The situation is clearly central, but it is not clear whether the narrative ultimately endorses confrontation, reconciliation, retaliation or another response.
- Effects of avoidance and return: Tate spends a year in France to avoid the former friend, then returns determined not to let the situation control her senior year. The book presents avoidance and renewed resistance as important parts of Tate’s situation, but does not establish which choices prove helpful or sustainable.
- Worth knowing
- The book directly signals bullying, humiliation, social exclusion, gossip, sadistic pranks, emotional distress, language, violence and sexual situations. The ending and the treatment of these elements are not established here.