The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed Review
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| Rating: 5/5 |
Happy International Women's Day everybody! In honour of today I thought I would post my review for The Nowhere Girls by Amy Reed. Now, I'm going to be honest and say the only reason why I bought this book was because it was really cheap on Amazon, and I thought that it couldn't be that bad, but this book was amazing and I have no idea why I've never heard of it before even though it has an average rating of 4.44 on Goodreads. This book dealt with some pretty heavy topics really well and it had great characters, and a brilliant story to top it all off.
This book is a bit weird to start as you kinda get info dumps within the first few chapters that slow down the pacing of this book, and to begin with I was really disheartened to see it as I thought all the writing would be like that. It wasn't, it was almost as if the writing got better the more the book went on and I think once the book found it's pace it was great. Amy Reed's writing isn't perfect, but it isn't half bad. I also really enjoyed the structuring of this book with different chapters focusing on different third person narratives, I particularly enjoyed any of the chapters labelled 'Us' as this really allowed us to see the scope and extent of the problems Amy discusses in this book.
The book focuses mainly on three amazing girls: Grace, Erin and Rosina. Grace is a lovely character who I really love because she's not afraid to say and fight for what she believes in, but she's also humble and full of empathy. Rosina was this great fireball kind of character who was so brave, but even though she was this character she was shown to be so caring through her friendship with Erin and her relationship with her family. But my favourite character was Erin, a girl with Aspergers. It is so rare to read about a main character with Aspergers - especially a female character with Aspergers, we got to see so much of how she views the world and her relationship with others and it was fantastic. What else was really great about Erin was she wasn't just her Aspegers, she was also this great, brave, funny character who really lit up the book for me.
Not only do we get to meet these three amazing girls, we get to meet Grace's mum - a kickass women if you ask me. Not only does her mum leave her old, extremely conservative church, she moves to a more forward thinking one and talks for acceptance and equality for everyone regardless of religion - and I just love her because she embodies all the right things. Then there's the unnamed POVs we see in the 'US' chapters which were great as each one raised different stories: we have a closeted trans girl, a conservative girl, two lesbians, cheerleaders, and a black girl labeling the Nowhere Girls as white feminism. These chapters really brought voices to so many kind of girls, and it was so lovely to see that kind of inclusion within this book as it's so important.
Not only do we get great female characters, we get great female friendships. The friendship that develops between the three 'main' girls is incredible to see, and by the end of the book we get to see this truly empowering female friendship - that may have it's ups and downs, but is still such an amazing one and truly a force to be reckoned with. Not only do we get to explore the friendship forged between these three girls we explored the friendships girls make across 'the social hierarchy', and it was so beautiful to see girls joining together for this cause they were all passionate about and fighting in this amazing way. What was also really great was the way this ended, we don't know if Otis and Erin got together or how any other girl's romances developed, and that just really shows that it wasn't important because this book was more about friendship and unity and I love that.
This book tackled rape culture head on and we got to see the impact of this and how we can all perpetuate it, but also on how we can help to take a stand and stop it. It is also such a great story on how victims of rape, sexual assault and harassment can be impacted by those who choose to commit those crimes and how that trauma stays with them, but it also talks about how those victims can start to move forward and how people can help them do that. Ultimately, Reed makes it clear that the best way we can move forward from this is by being an inclusive and empathetic community, and it was great to see in the penultimate chapter of the book girls going to stand with Cheyenne and support her as a body. It was the true definition of girl power.
There were a couple of sour points in this book, such as the scene where an off comment is made by this guy about his trans sister and it doesn't sit well with me. However, I think the guy was presented as someone who wasn't very nice as he went on to remain silent on what his friends said about girls for the majority of the book, and also ignored allegations made against them. So to me this person represented someone who needed to change and not necessarily someone the reader was meant to listen to.
This book was incredible, and is definitely one of my favourite reads in the last year. This carries such an important message and I even found myself tearing up towards the end of this book as the last few scenes are so beautiful and well done. I encourage everyone to read this so you can understand rape culture just that little bit better, and if you're looking for strong, diverse female characters - this is a book for you.
Favourite Quote: 'Because the girls are unstoppable. They are a force. They are a single body.'
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