6.5 years after leaving home to pursue her modelling career, Jessa is back for her brother’s wedding. She reunites with angry Brody, the boy she loved her whole life, now a man, the manager of her brother’s band, Dirty, and furious with her for leaving. Why did she? Too late, no explanations, Brody tells her. She should think of him as dead to her.
Besides, he has a girlfriend and he’s banging her at this long wedding weekend thing, where everyone drinks a lot and talks about penises and music and which band members they’ve hooked up with. It’s all very.
Everybody is thrilled that Jessa’s back and they want her to stick around, write songs, play with the band, etc. And Jessa halfway commits to it, because she maybe wants to finally tell Brody why she left 6.5 years ago, although if she can get him back without telling him, maybe they could just do that?
‘What’s wrong with Jessa’ was a mildly important sub-plot in the first book of the series, ‘Dirty Like Me.’ Jesse, her brother, had persuaded her to write lyrics for his solo album, but she was dodging his calls and wasn’t committing to any meet up plans. Jesse didn’t know why she was being like this: unhappy, disconnected, refusing to do something she loved (write music) and he was worried she was still grieving over their mother’s death (about 8 years ago) and that she may have been thinking about suicide (their father completed suicide when she was 9).
This is a long and empty book, and it makes me sad to say that because I read Diamond’s forward about how much she loved these characters and their story. I wanted to love them too. I think she spent too long with each of them in their miserable places, and then had an unbalanced ending that felt like a rush to the finish line.
Jessa is highly introverted, and aware of her sadnesses and the dangers in falling into them. She’s very controlled in what she’s willing to share of herself. Frustratingly for the other characters in the book, she isn’t willing to share a great deal emotionally.
Part of the story of her relationship with Brody is told in childhood flashbacks, where he was her protector. Their first meeting is told very early in the book, and it established Jessa’s character completely. She’s 8, and she’s retreated to the top of a climbing dome, while two older boys bully her and tell her she has shit on her pants and is dirty. Jessa is trying to ignore them and retreat into herself when along comes Brody, 13, a cool dangerous older boy who threatens the bullies and forces them to eat what’s either mud or shit before they run off. Jessa and Brody then discuss what Jessa is doing on top of the dome, and Jessa says she’s being the princess, which Brody thinks is cute, although he also tells her she has to stand up for herself and be brave. She won’t though. Jessa, when threatened, retreats into herself.
Brody decides that child Jessa is adorable: she’s pretty, she idolises him and she’s a bit of a dork. He gets to spend more time with her as she grows up. It’s all a bit murky when he tells 15 year old Jessa that he’ll wait for her, but it’s nowhere near the worst thing that’s ever happened between a child heroine and her older hero.
Brody’s faults are that he’s angry and judgemental and emotionally abusive to Jessa. And both of them seem willing to agree that Brody being angry and judgemental and emotionally abusive to Jessa is what Jessa deserves, because she left and because she retreats into herself. I don’t think they really properly resolve this.
Brody and Jessa have very few genuinely nice moments together, because everything is overshadowed by whatever it is that Jessa is concealing from Brody, and because to Brody, Jessa is a flight risk and he can’t risk being hurt the same way again. He has his own rotten childhood stuff as well. The worst of it comes out very late, and as a sort of a full disclosure afterthought, which is disturbing since it doesn’t feel like it’s properly dealt with at all, as if just communicating it is enough to show that both these characters have suffered pain and because they’ve talked about it while now understand each other better and everything will be fine. Probably, it won’t be.
The fact that they so rarely emotionally connected without a whole lot of tense baggage also overshadows their sex scenes. Diamond does a good long build up to sex, and writes a good passion scene, but it’s difficult to get enthusiastic about these two characters together when they are clearly so distant.
My ‘what’s wrong with Jessa’ theory for almost the entirety of the book was that she was raped. The plot I’d constructed had her raped by Seth, the drug addicted band member who was kicked out of the band not long after the band completed its first tour. I’d had her keeping silent about the rape because she didn’t want to risk her family and friends not believing her, and because she devalued herself. I’d had her convinced that Seth was more important to the band than she was, so she just let it all go.
I was sort of wrong.
When the story finally comes out, it’s that Jessa traded sex in exchange for drugs. Seth introduced her to drugs when she was at her most vulnerable, after her mother’s death, and kept feeding the addiction he’d helped her form. Jessa was also feeling incredible pressure to be the girl her brother and Brody and all her friends wanted her to be, the sweet, perfect pretty good girl. Jessa was 16 when this started, Seth 19, and Jessa had told Seth that she was in love with Brody (but Brody was with another girl) and Seth had told Jessa he was in love with her.
This revelation comes near the end of the book, as Jessa confesses all this to Brody, and Brody immediately leaves to punch Seth, who he accuses of rape, and kick him out of the band. Seth had been invited to rejoin the band when Jessa turned down the offer of playing with the band, as well as being their lyricist. Jessa, prior to confessing all of this to Brody, had warned Seth that she was going to reveal all, and she was giving him the opportunity to tell his side of the story. Which he didn’t do.
Jessa denies that it was rape. She felt ashamed of keeping her addiction secret, and she felt like a whore for trading sex for drugs and that’s why she got out. She knew she couldn’t be in the band and free herself of her addiction.
The whole tone of this book is dark and it feels like a departure from the first book, which was a more fun ‘ordinary girl meets rock star’ plot. I could have let this one go as just slightly off and not for me, but then the epilogue switches to Seth’s POV. He’s gone into exile with a different name, playing with another band, when he discovers that the band will do a documentary based on the search to fill his place in the band. Seth has grown a beard and doesn’t look like he used to look, so he decides he’ll go audition in disguise. He’s annoyed that Jessa told everyone that he’d raped her, because he didn’t. So all of this is sounding vaguely threatening and like he’s going to be the villain in the next book, but the title of the next book is ‘Dirty Like Seth,’ suggesting that he’s the hero.
Which just seems horrible. Even if we accept that Seth isn’t a rapist, he’s still a boy who got a vulnerable girl addicted to drugs, and exploited her vulnerability. I’d take a redemption story where he acknowledges and atones for what he’s done, but how is he romantic hero material?