Please note that I gave this book half a star, but rounded to 1 star on Goodreads.

Please note that this review discusses date rape as well as the book.

I have things to do and not a lot of time to go over what made this book a truly awful book that looked at date rape.

Focusing on three sisters (college age Jan and high schoolers Erika and Melanie) who live in New York.

What can I really say. Ms. Needell did a very bad job of developing any of the characters in this book. For such a serious subject matter I was shocked at how none of the sisters individual stories really flowed with the main plot (the aftermath of Melanie being date raped).

Jan is entirely focused on herself and her up and down relationship with her high school boyfriend Adam. When she finds out what happened to Melanie, I honestly don't think it made a blip on her radar at all. All of the later chapters are still here dealing with Adam and or obsessing over what her roommate Eliza is doing and how she wishes she were more like her.

Erika I had a soft spot for from beginning to end. Apparently being model beautiful and loving math can make for a socially awkward young woman. I liked that Erika thought of others and I hated how she kept getting squished down from Melanie through the whole freaking book. There was a key scene between this character and two of her long time friends and I liked how she spoke up to her friend Morris about rape. I did hate how the author than had her call her sister a "slut" when they had another fight because once again Melanie was being an asshole.

Melanie sucks. I think for me, I found it to be an interesting choice that Ms. Needell made Melanie an abuser (she is) to her sister and a bully to those around her and in the end she's still the same person after. In the afterword Ms. Needell mentions that Melanie's father saying she's the boss in the end moments of the book and Ms. Needell later referencing that to show that Melanie was the boss in her life and it shows how she was healing. And I feel like a jackass because my immediate knee jerk response was healing from what? No one in this family discusses anything. Everything is glossed over. Melanie throws a wine glass at Erika leaving her bloody and having to get stitches and no one says a word to Melanie about it. I just have no words for this book. And I am definitely not saying that all rape victims need to be nice people. I just don't understand what the hell was going on with this book. We are given plenty of chapters to see how much Melanie hates Erika and her family just allows her to do the things she does. I was seriously outraged about that.

The secondary characters are not given much room in this one. As other reviewers noted, Ms. Needell made the "interesting" choice to include the rapist's point of view in her story. It really wrecked the flow of the book. But most importantly, it wrecked whatever higher meaning she wanted readers to take away from this book. Based on those scenes we get the boy's confusion because he didn't hear a no from Melanie. They were both drunk and the author portrayed it at the time that Melanie wanted it to happen. But I don't know if that was his own drunken thinking or what. Why you ask? Because the author doesn't allow us Melanie's perspective at all. She is more mad after the fact that she slept with the boy because she doesn't like him that way and she's angry that he wants to talk about it (i.e. he thinks it means they can be boyfriend/girlfriend) and she wants him to go away.

I just. Sigh. We have a later scene with Melanie accusing the boy of going forward with things even though she said no (though she doesn't recall once again what happened) which turns into a really awkward scene of them both coming out looking like terrible people. And once again the boy doesn't seem to get what he was doing or what he did was wrong at all and it doesn't seem to me that Melanie even gets why what he did was wrong. This whole scene read weird to me.

The writing was stiff and didn't work at all. The sister's voices were different though. Jan's voice was mostly indifferent and indecisive. Erika's voice was timid and afraid. And Melanie's voice was nasty and mean. So there was that going for the book at least. You didn't need a big chapter heading setting up who was speaking.

The flow was terrible. I felt like I was reading three very disjointed stories. And the lack of dialogue between the sisters and their parents was so weird. I just needed to see some emotion from them about anything.

The setting of New York wasn't used at all in this book besides people describing certain landmarks around.

The ending was a wash. Nothing was resolved at all. Though once again when you read the afterword you realize that the author did seem to think she wrapped things up. I really think there are other books out there that do a better job of handling the topic of rape and date rape. I read "Speak" last year and thought it was wonderful. I rarely get pissed about the amount of money I spend on books, but I am really pissed I spent $10.99 on this debut novel. If you are interested in it, I suggest borrowing from the library or a friend. ( )

The books starts off with the parents' separation and the dad moving out and the older sister leaving for college. Change is inevitable but the ability to deal with the curve balls that the two high school sisters who attend a New York private school must deal with ignite the already tumultuous relationship they have. Compound that with the choice of attending a party where drugs and alcohol are served and one sister walking in on the other after being rap; the question is who is to blame? The author's note at the end explains that this type of sexual intercourse was in fact rape. The boy is to blame but the girl is not. I am not sure that I agree with the author's note after reading the book. Recommended to: mature high school teens, victims of rape, party-attending teens, those who like cautionary tales or realistic teen fiction. ( )