My
name is Tate. He doesn't call me that, though. He would never refer to me so
informally, if he referred to me at all. No, he'll barely even speak to me. But he still won't leave me alone.
We
were best friends once. Then he turned on me and made it his mission to ruin my
life. I've been humiliated, shut out, and gossiped about all through high
school. His pranks and rumors got more sadistic as time wore on, and I made
myself sick trying to stay out of his way. I even went to France for a year,
just to avoid him.
But
I'm done hiding from him now, and there's no way in hell I'll allow him to ruin
my senior year. He might not have changed, but I have. It's time to fight back.
Growing
up neighbours, Tate and Jared are the best of friends who get each other
through the rough patches of life. They
are kindred spirits; they are inseparable.
Then the summer before freshman year Jared visits his father and comes
back completely changed. Gone is the
gentle boy who held Tate’s hand and snuck into her room for innocent
sleepovers. He is replaced by a cold,
hard, bully. Suddenly, out of the blue,
with no explanation, he hates Tate… with a passion that terrifies her. Suddenly her best friend turns on her, and
Jared makes it his personal mission to make Tate’s life a living hell.
Rumours
and pranks follow Tate wherever she goes and suddenly she is a social pariah –
no boys will date her, nobody will invite her to parties, and nobody will stick
up for her when Jared moves in for the kill. For over two years Tate is crushed by Jared’s
treatment of her, until eventually his bullying makes her physically ill and
she convinces her father to let her study abroad for a year. Jared, of course, ensures that she leaves for
France in tears.
When
Tate returns for senior year, she is the changed one. She’s got spunk, she’s got confidence and is
no longer hiding from Jared or cowering from his attacks – she’s fighting fire
with fire. Unsettled by the new Tate,
Jared can’t get his kicks from making her cry anymore. His old tactics don’t have any effect on
her, and to get her to crack he must turn the pressure up… way up. Pulling out all the stops to prove that he
can still make the tough girl cry, Jared finally goes too far and Tate realises
she can’t do it anymore. She doesn’t
like the person she has become in fighting Jared. “This is how bullies are made”. So Tate gives up – she gives up on fighting
back, she gives up on trying to figure him out, she accepts the boy she once
loved is gone and she just completely gives up on Jared. It is only then, when he can’t get any
reaction out of Tate at all, when she tells him “You are nothing to me” that he
realises he has finally lost a hold on the girl he secretly loves.
Jared
finally makes the move to reconcile with Tate – but is it too late? Tate is fed up with Jared and his treatment
of her and it will take a whole lot of explaining to make Tate understand why
he turned on her; and even more to convince her that he truly loves her.
Bully
by Penelope Douglas is quite different than any young adult novel I’ve read
before. I liked Tate as a character. She’s independent and brave and refuses to
let Jared keep her down. She’s a
well-developed, multi-layered character and gets the reader behind her very
early on. Jared, on the other hand, I
had a harder time warming up to. Even
after he explained why he turned on Tate I didn’t really get it. I can understand why he was hurt and upset,
but it doesn’t justify the things he did to Tate. I get
that the author tried to portray him as a misunderstood, wounded guy who lashed
out at his best friend because he couldn’t hurt the people who had hurt him,
but for me it fell flat. I get lashing
out against your loved ones in a weak moment because you are hurt… but
deliberately hurting the one person who loved you unconditionally for three
years?! That’s not lashing out – that’s
something else entirely.
There was a total lack of character development in Jared. It seemed like one day he just flipped a switch, deciding to be the nice guy Tate used to know, and there was a complete lack of development in this regard. Unfortunately the author never gave me enough reasons to fully like Jared's character, and his reconciliation with Tate left me unaffected. Because of Jared this was never I couple I found myself rooting for. I was rooting for Tate all the way, and while I was happy she was finally happy, Jared still left me cold. I do have sympathy for what he endured, but that does not magically excuse his horrid treatment of the girl he claims to love, for three years. He literally went out of his way to hurt and humiliate her time and time again. I'm sorry, but if you truly love someone you will never stoop this low.
I understood
Tate’s forgiveness considering the person she is and the depth of love for the
boy Jared once was, but I had a hard time dealing with her now being in a
relationship with him. I just don’t
understand how a girl can be in a relationship with a guy who emotionally
abused her for so long – yes, she understands his reasons now, but can you
really just forget three years of torment after one kiss? It would have been more realistic if Tate had
more difficulty with this decision, and if the reader had been privy to her
reservations. I think the author initially
went too far in drawing Jared as a villain.
His treatment of Tate was simply too big of a barrier to completely get
over, and it was simply not possible to get me, as the reader, to forgive and
forget and suddenly trust. By that point
he was too well established as a jerk to endear him to the reader, and the lack
of character development made it impossible to like him even after he softens
up. The author failed to humanize
him. Mostly, she sexualizes him... Using
his hot body as an excuse for forgiveness doesn’t work, because let’s face it, that's
not a good enough reason.
The
supporting characters don’t fare much better. Madoc starts out a total jerk and halfway
through the author tries to endear him to the reader. Same as Jared, the author went to too much
trouble early on to make the reader hate him, and then suddenly expects the
reader to like them because they do one nice thing – I just couldn’t warm up to
him the way the author intended. Tate’s
new best friend, K.C, is just a terrible friend, plain and simple. I don’t like her at all and I feel Tate was
way too forgiving of her actions and what I saw as a complete betrayal. Also, the fact that Tate never addresses this
betrayal with Jared is unrealistic.
*Spoiler alert* If a guy I have feelings for hooks up with my best
friend simply to hurt me and to turn her against me, that’s not okay and will
definitely be a huge stumbling block in the road to romance. I just can’t see a best friend worth her salt
hooking up with her best friend’s tormentor, and I can’t see Tate not being
bothered by Jared and K.C’s fling once she and Jared make up. She never confronts Jared about it and he
never apologises; it’s like the whole Jared/KC fling never happened.
This
book also features graphic sexual scenes – surprising to me for a young adult
novel. The sexual content was more adult
than young adult. I enjoy young adult
novels because generally while they tend to be passionate, the characters
seldom hit the sheets; and if they do the author keeps it clean. This one was quite graphic, and I don’t quite
know what to make of that. It’s definitely
not the kind of thing I would be comfortable having my niece read.
All in all, whichever way it leaves you, Bully is a moving and powerful read. This book does not sit comfortably with me, and maybe that is a really big compliment to the author. It upset me, it confused me, it made me reflect and ponder, and - for whatever reason - it will stay with me.
Product information:
Title: Bully
Author: Penelope Douglas
Pages: 371
Publisher: Penelope Douglas
Year: 2013
ISBN: 1490559175
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