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Train Wreck and Too Late
Some mistakes can never be repaired.
The narrator of Train Wreck is looking back at the year she was 15 . . . She is in love with a bad boy named Johnny. Johnny's friends play a cruel trick on a misfit named Suzy by convincing her that Johnny is attracted to her. When the prank goes too far, the narrator wants something big to happen to prove Johnny still loves her. The prank goes tragically wrong when Suzy is gang-raped. The narrator, now married to Johnny, reflects on the day she watched the horrific attack and did nothing.
In Too Late , 15-year-old Greg is in a teen sex offenders' facility because of an assault on his stepsister. He hates the professionals who try to help him and can't wait to go home. When he enters a room for a meeting, his mother is there crying. Her partner, whom Greg calls Step Dude, sits at her side. They have come to tell Greg they don't want him back. It's too late to be good, they say. Greg comes to the crippling realization of what he has the father he has both hated and feared.
Each book in the Single Voice series consists of two separate but thematically connected stories with distinct inverted covers in an alluring "flip-book" format. Exploding with the urgency, drama and confusion of adolescence, these books will appeal to both avid and less experienced readers. No subject is off limits in the Single Voice series.
The narrator of Train Wreck is looking back at the year she was 15 . . . She is in love with a bad boy named Johnny. Johnny's friends play a cruel trick on a misfit named Suzy by convincing her that Johnny is attracted to her. When the prank goes too far, the narrator wants something big to happen to prove Johnny still loves her. The prank goes tragically wrong when Suzy is gang-raped. The narrator, now married to Johnny, reflects on the day she watched the horrific attack and did nothing.
In Too Late , 15-year-old Greg is in a teen sex offenders' facility because of an assault on his stepsister. He hates the professionals who try to help him and can't wait to go home. When he enters a room for a meeting, his mother is there crying. Her partner, whom Greg calls Step Dude, sits at her side. They have come to tell Greg they don't want him back. It's too late to be good, they say. Greg comes to the crippling realization of what he has the father he has both hated and feared.
Each book in the Single Voice series consists of two separate but thematically connected stories with distinct inverted covers in an alluring "flip-book" format. Exploding with the urgency, drama and confusion of adolescence, these books will appeal to both avid and less experienced readers. No subject is off limits in the Single Voice series.
- GenresYoung Adult
128 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 18, 2011
Two stories told in first person (flip the book over to read each one), several one page excerpts and an advertising spread for other books by the same publisher are included in this book. How are you supposed to catalog THAT? But the real problem lies with the stories themselves.
In Too Late, a teenage boy tells the story of his incarceration in a facility for sex offenders, his escape and brutal attack(and graphic) by two men who pick up the hitchhiking teen, and his return to the facility. We learn that he assaulted his younger step-sister, that he had been assaulted by his biological father when he was a child, he attempts suicide but survives, and his psychologist applauds this as a breakthrough.
In Train Wreck, we hear the story of a woman who, as a teenager, helped play a devastating prank on a classmate that resulted in a gang rape, a trial where everyone denied the rape and the boys were exonerated, the woman married the rapist (they've been together 17 years!), but now wonders what might have happened to the victim who disappeared shortly after the trial…..did they ruin her life? Gee, you think?
There is no redemption here, the stories are brutal and no lessons are learned. As an adult, I can see that there might be some use for these stories in a classroom/clinical setting where teens read the stories and then participate in extensive discussion, but just on a library shelf for anyone to pick up – NO!
In Too Late, a teenage boy tells the story of his incarceration in a facility for sex offenders, his escape and brutal attack(and graphic) by two men who pick up the hitchhiking teen, and his return to the facility. We learn that he assaulted his younger step-sister, that he had been assaulted by his biological father when he was a child, he attempts suicide but survives, and his psychologist applauds this as a breakthrough.
In Train Wreck, we hear the story of a woman who, as a teenager, helped play a devastating prank on a classmate that resulted in a gang rape, a trial where everyone denied the rape and the boys were exonerated, the woman married the rapist (they've been together 17 years!), but now wonders what might have happened to the victim who disappeared shortly after the trial…..did they ruin her life? Gee, you think?
There is no redemption here, the stories are brutal and no lessons are learned. As an adult, I can see that there might be some use for these stories in a classroom/clinical setting where teens read the stories and then participate in extensive discussion, but just on a library shelf for anyone to pick up – NO!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 13, 2010
Two stories, each clocking in at 50 pages each. These are fast-paced, plot driven, and edgy. A good choice for reluctant readers and perhaps even more appealing than Orca titles. I was impressed with the level of writing in each story and plowed through both in half an hour.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews