This is a difficult book to read.  It’s dealing with a lot of heavy stuff that people don’t like to talk about and hope never happens to them or anyone they know.  At the same time, it’s very eye-opening to how something like this feels and what kind of person it leaves behind.  It’s about a teenage girl, Rumy, living in a small town who is sexually assaulted by the sheriffs son.  Can you guess what happened to the boy who did it?  He lives in a big city now after the sheriff claims the girl is just looking for attention.

There are two main plot lines going on throughout the book and Summers does a fantastic job of navigating between the two smoothly.  The main storyline in my opinion was when Penny went missing.  Penny was Rumy’s best friend when she was sexually assaulted but she didn’t believe her when she found out.  This year they are not friends but Penny still sticks up for Rumy when she is being bullied by everyone at school.  By the end Rumy realizes that even if they weren’t really friends anymore, Penny looked out for her until the end, which is a very powerful thing to think about.  If you’ve ever gone through something and don’t know how to be friends after, this is understandable to you.  You’ll always care about that person, even if you can’t show it.  Rumy dealing with her assault and the aftermath of it is the other big plot story.  She starts dating a boy, Leon, who works with her at the diner on the outskirts of town.  She has trouble getting close to him and telling him what happened because she sees another girl when she is with him.  Throughout the book, Rumy talks about two different girls, the girl she was before the assault, and the girl she is after.  The girl before is dead to her, another extremely powerful image that helps understand the tragedy that is sexual assault.

I honestly stayed up all night finishing this book.  It pulls you in and makes it hard to put down.  This is an important book to read if you want to understand how girls in these situations feel and how to treat them.