Breaking Her Fall in Crazy Challenge Connection

Jun 25, 2012 Linda C rated it it was ok

Shelves: read-2012

Brats. What a bunch of brats. Upper middle class, well-off, well-educated, spoiled brats. The teenagers were obnoxious and the adults not much better. This book suffered from the curse of contemporary fiction-- set in 1998, it's not old enough to be considered historical, but too old to feel contemporary. Instead it just felt stale and dated.

During that time frame, there was a slew of "research" (mostly discredited now, I hope) that claimed that we were "failing" our teenage daughters. Girls wer Brats. What a bunch of brats. Upper middle class, well-off, well-educated, spoiled brats. The teenagers were obnoxious and the adults not much better. This book suffered from the curse of contemporary fiction-- set in 1998, it's not old enough to be considered historical, but too old to feel contemporary. Instead it just felt stale and dated.

During that time frame, there was a slew of "research" (mostly discredited now, I hope) that claimed that we were "failing" our teenage daughters. Girls were unhappy; girls were depressed; girls were suicidal; girls were starving, binging, purging, cutting. While all of that was probably true of some girls, from the vantage point of 2012, it's clear that it was exaggerated and most of our girls are doing fine. Unfortunately, that theme permeated the book.

The story centered loosely on 14 year old Kat and 15 year old Abby and the events of a particular night, when Kat drank herself senseless and performed oral sex on a parade of boys, while her BFF, Abby, was upstairs having sex with another boy. The narrator of the book, Kat's father, receives a call about his daughter, goes to look for her, and inadvertently injures Abby's boyfriend during a scuffle.

The 400 page book covered the lives of the primary characters over the next six months, while the father, Tucker, is awaiting trial on assault charges stemming from the incident.

The teenagers, Kat, Abby, and the boyfriend, Jed, were just so obnoxious that it was difficult to feel any kind of sympathy for them. Kat never once apologized to her father for what she did; nor was she ever punished. The only consequence was that she was expelled from the elite private school that she attended. Instead, Tucker continually beat himself up over how he had "failed" his daughter. Kat continually locked herself in her room and refused to go to the new school (which she was also mad about because she was never "asked" if she wanted to attend).

Uh, she was 14... why did she feel like she had a choice? That door should have been taken off her room and her butt should have been hauled into school. A door on a teenagers room is a privilege, not a right. He told her not to lock it, she continued to do so, but there were no consequences. Instead, everything was about Kat-- Kat was sad, Kat didn't want people to be talking about her, it was her business what she did and where she went, and Tucker seemed unable to grasp the fact that he was the FATHER. He was NOT A FRIEND.

In one scene, while Tucker was trying to find a school that would take Kat on short notice (she couldn't possibly go to public school, could she?), one school administrator suggested a boarding school in Colorado where she could go on nature hikes. If she were my kid, she would have been on the first plane with a one way ticket until there was some improvement in her attitude.

There were also no consequences to the boys that gave Kat the alcohol. Although charges were threatened, if the case went to trial, that also made the book feel dated. In today's hyper sensitive environment, the boys involved would have undoubtedly been charged with statutory rape; they were 16 and 17 and she was only 14. Instead only Kat was expelled from school.

One reviewer said that this book should be required reading for every parent of a young teenager. Don't believe that. This is NOT how healthy teenagers act or think. I see young teenagers all the time-- my daughter, her friends, my girl scouts, the kids at church, role models for how you want your kids to be, not the self-absorbed brats in this book.

These were characters who had everything and understood nothing. This book was a disappointment. ...more

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