Amanda Maciel

Lucky Girl by Amanda Maciel is a thought-provoking young adult novel about sexual assault.

Rosie Fuller is a beautiful teenager who revels in the attention she gets from the opposite sex. While she is popular with the boys at her school, she is not exactly teeming with female friends. After spending the summer apart from her best friend, Maddie Costello, she is shocked to discover that Maddie has transformed from a slightly nerdy awkward duckling into a beautiful swan. Rosie is determined to be a better friend to Maddie so after learning of Maddie's crush on popular football player (and Rosie's summer fling) Cory Callahan, she breaks things off with Cory. Despite her lingering jealousy, Rosie is supportive of her friend's new romance with Cory. However, one night at a party, Cory attacks Rosie and instead of coming to her friend's defense, Maddie blames Rosie for coming on to her boyfriend. In the aftermath, Rosie is ashamed and blames herself for Cory's actions but will her new friendship with transfer student Alex Goode help her see that what happened is not her fault?

Rosie is beautiful and she knows it. She uses her looks to validate her self-worth and she seeks out attention from boys every chance she gets. She is a party girl who sees nothing wrong with flitting from boy to boy but her relationships are as superficial as she is. While her friendship with Maddie means the world to her, Rosie is extremely jealous of her friend's transformation and she is ill prepared for the change in the dynamic of the friendship once Maddie gains some much needed self-confidence.

Initially, Rosie is so incredibly self-centered and selfish that she is difficult to like but after the incident with Cory, she finally begins to tone down her need for male attention. She is also much more reflective as tries to understand her conflicted emotions about what happened to her. Like many girls and women, Rosie is certain that she is to blame for the attack because she dresses to noticed and loves to flirt. She goes over the events from that night again and again and while at first she is convinced she flirted too much, she gradually begins to understand that the only person who is responsible for what happened to her is Cory. This is just the beginning of Rosie's transformation from self-absorbed party girl to a young woman who begins to realize that outward appearances are not the measure of a person. Repairing her friendship with Maddie is another important facet of her newfound maturity. Will Rosie take the next step in healing from her ordeal and report Cory for assaulting her?

Lucky Girl is a poignant and powerful novel that challenges the pervasive "blame the victim" attitude following a sexual assault. The long standing "she asked for it" mindset is still firmly in place and women are conditioned to automatically take the blame when they are sexually assaulted. The resulting shame and guilt in the aftermath of an unwanted sexual advance or assault are HUGE factors in a victim's unwillingness to report an attacker. Amanda Maciel's portrayal of Rosie after Cory's attempted assault is an all too accurate depiction of what a victim feels and thinks in the aftermath of such a shocking and painful event. In Rosie's case, her confusion is much worse considering her previous relationship with Cory and her own behavior. The subject matter is difficult to read, but this topic is so incredibly important that I highly recommend Lucky Girl to readers of all ages.… (más)

Literary Merit: Good
Characterization: Great
Recommended: Highly Recommended
Level: High School

This is a realistic cautionary tale about sexual assault told in a hopeful way without being overly violent or explicit. This is an important topic for high school students to talk about and learn about setting and respecting boundaries. Rosie Fuller is an extremely attractive high school student who has dated a lot of guys and enjoys flirtatious attention. More important to her, though, is her best friend Maddie, and Rosie is trying very hard to act like a better friend to her than she has in the past. Rosie even gives up her summer romance with football player Corey when she realizes how much Maddie likes him. Everything is going fine, if a little awkward, until a sexual assault occurs at a drunken party. It feels like everyone judges Rosie, and her friendship with Maddie is severed. Rosie finally shares the story of what really happened at the party with her new friend, a transfer student with a huge back story. This is told in first person, which helps to emphasize Rosie's interpretations of others' actions and words. Rosie grows through her self evaluation, and her family is ultimately very supportive of her and she learns to show others that she values them, too.… (más)

This review has some pretty mild spoilers (I don't think they reveal much about the story, but read at your own risk)

This is a book that gave me pretty mixed feelings, although overall I liked it a lot, as you can guess from the rating I gave it. The fact that it made me so conflicted is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because in the best of cases it can mean that the story was really compelling. I think that was the case here, because even though I didn’t love the writing style and it had some weak points, I felt like it took a difficult topic and did a good job on conveying to the reader just how complex it is. Bullying is a theme that encompasses a multitude of factors, situations and people, and as the author says on her epilogue, it’s necessary to understand that there are a lot of versions of the same story. I felt like in that regard, the author did a good job of portraying how all these things can mix and relate when it comes to bullying, and I really enjoyed how the feelings at the base of this phenomenon are incorporated into the story, like when Sara says she feels a surge of power and control, and all the times she recognizes her own jealousy and insecurities in relation to Emma. This makes you see Sara as really unapologetic at first, which you slowly realize has to do with the fact that she doesn’t seem to think anything she did was really what pushed Emma over the edge. But what I think the author does really well is that it makes you really think about this, and it makes you start considering how different Sara would probably feel if you, for example, removed her best friend Brielle from the equation. She seems to fuel all the anger Sara feels towards Emma, and empowers her to do things she considers to be kind of ruthless, but that she can come to justify when Brielle goes on talking about how much of a “skank” Emma is.
Even though things like this can be difficult to read when they come from characters as cruel and unapologetic as these ones could be, they offer a perspective on these situations that we have to consider when we want to think critically about them and be able to discuss them having taken different aspects into consideration. That’s why the fact that I was always on the limit between seriously disliking Sara and starting to have more positive feelings towards her was something that I actually enjoyed very much.

This brings up another thing I really liked about this book, and it’s how realistically different types of relationships are portrayed. One of them are dysfunctional or toxic friendships, which is something that you don’t get to see so clearly that often. The author does a really good job in showing how you can get sucked into these relationships where you suddenly feel like part of something important and great, and how difficult it is to see that maybe it’s not so amazing as you thought it was, and more importantly, that it has turned you into someone far worse than you thought you were or very different from how you perceive yourself to be. Through various people’s comments on her friendship with Brielle, Sara starts to question the way she treats her, and how comfortable she really is when she’s around her. What I found was particularly well done was how many mixed feelings you get when you finally get out of these relationships, and how hard it is to finally choose what’s best for you, even if that means leaving behind a person that was so essential to some of the most defining years of your life.
Another relationship was the one between Sara and Dylan, which was actually very much related to Sara’s relationship with Brielle. When Sara loses her virginity, which later she realizes was done in a way to get closer to her friend, she says something along the lines of “I’m just glad I won’t have to worry about it anymore”, which is, I think, what happens in a lot of cases. I hadn’t read a young adult book where this was shown so plainly, and I really appreciated how realistic it was.

With some exceptions, this book had very layered characters, which I think is something that really makes it stand out between others dealing with a similar topic, and helps appreciate the way these relationships are constructed. It was great to see a crack on this bully-victim relationship that seemed to be going on between Sara-Brielle-Emma. Sometimes Emma stood up to them or defied them and did some things that you can say were sort of questionable, and that, in contrast with this whole romanticization of her character that seems to be going on since her passing, makes for a really interesting way of approaching the subject of bullying and for multi-dimensional people. This last thing was what initially kept me reading the book, actually. I really liked how you got to see different aspects of Sara’s personality, and I think the way the story is written, with one chapter set in the present and the other in the past, truly helped that.

Now, onto the things I didn’t really like. I’m gonna start with something related to what I just talked about, and that is the characters that weren’t really that well developed, in my opinion. I’m mainly gonna talk about Brielle, because I think she’s the other character, apart from Sara, that’s most important to the story. I have to say that I really hated how Brielle seemed to fit with this really cliché “mean girl” image. For a minute there I thought we were gonna get to see another side of her and it just ever happened, which is a shame, because I think she had the potential to be a really interesting character. This takes me to something I absolutely hate on any book/show/movie/story, and that I sadly felt was used here, which is rape-or-some-sort-of-sexual-assault-for-character-development trope. This is something that I had anticipated since pretty much the beginning of the book, and when it is finally known that Brielle had suffered through some form of sexual assault, I really hoped that it was gonna be mentioned again or serve some other purpose than to show she was actually vulnerable and not as sure or confident about sex as she seemed. But this was never mentioned again, didn’t relate in any way to the rest of the story or its characters. I had truly hoped this wasn’t going to happen and I was sad to see it did, because for me it takes from the story a lot and makes me not like it as much as I could had it been handled in a better way.
Another character that I felt was portrayed very very badly was the therapist, but I’m not gonna explain this right now, because it’s one of my biggest pet peeves ever and the reasons for this are pretty personal, so it would make this review endless if I attempted to write them down.

Another thing I didn’t appreciate was all the slut-shaming that went on, but then again I had to remind myself that this was from the point of view of a teenager. Not that this excuses it in any way, but it helps put the whole thing in perspective a little bit when I think of the way I myself thought of some things as a teenager and the way I think about the same stuff now as an adult. But I have to say, the whole thing about Emma being beautiful and boys liking her, and that playing such a big part on her being bullied, is something that made me very conflicted, because even though in a lot of cases that really is what fuels these type of situations, at times I felt like here it came across as kind of cartoonish. This, I guess, is related to the writing, which overall wasn’t as good as it could’ve been, and at the beginning pulled me away from the story a little bit. As I got farther into the book this seemed to bother me less and less, though, and I think the story was good enough to make you not really care about this that much.

The last thing I’m gonna talk about and that I didn’t really like was how Sara was constantly having these… epiphanies, I guess you could call them. Even though I got that the author was trying to convey that she was actually a nice enough girl, or a product of her environment and circumstances or social constructs, I felt it was pretty unrealistic, the way she seemed to have these really mature revelations all of a sudden. This was especially weird for me during the chapter where the trial happens, because her statement, even though I felt it showed pretty much what a person that can see how badly they acted would end up feeling about the whole situation, was a little too ideal and said all the right things. I felt like it ended up being kind of sloppy and I would’ve liked to see a little more subtlety on her character growth throughout the book.

All in all this was a book that I really enjoyed, and it made me think and feel enough to prompt me to write about it, so I’d say it does its job. I’d definitely recommend it and be interested in discussing it with someone else, because I feel like the topic it features is dealt with in a good way and really adds to other works with a similar subject. Props to the author for including some really good resources related to bullying at the end of the book, and for taking on a topic that is always difficult to approach in a sensible way.
… (más)