Wednesday 31 July 2013

Review: Bully


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.

I'm not going to let him bully me anymore.

Title: Bully (Fall Away ~ Book 01)
Author: Penelope Douglas | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Publication Date: June 17 2013
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 371 Pages
Add it to your TBR PileGoodreads
Buy ItAmazon US | Amazon UK

Source: Purchased (Kindle Edition)
Cover Love: Meh.  Don't love it, but I don't hate it ether.
Point of View: 1st person, following Tate

My Rating: 3 Stars

To say this book is 'blowing up' right now would be an understatement.  Mostly I have seen some really positive reviews out there, and even though I didn't necessarily flat out hate Bully, I didn't fall in love with it either.

“What was worse than losing you was when you started to hurt me.  Your words and actions made me hate coming to school.  They made me uncomfortable in my own home.”

I have one major MUST when it comes to reading.  I need a book boyfriend.  This may make me shallow, weird, or whatever else you want to call it... but I need to love the guy.  I need to fall in love with him, I need him to make me want to be the heroine, and I need to at the very least... like him.

Jared.  Jared.  Jared.  *sigh*  I so wanted to love Jared.  He had his moments, don't get me wrong.  When he finally gets his head out of his ass, he can actually be quite sweet.  However, with that said, I just couldn't seem to get past the 75% of evil Jared.  And no, I don't feel that evil is too harsh a word.  The 'pranks' that he pulls on Tate are not of the grade school variety.  Some are quite mean, but none are as mean as some of the things he actually says to her.

In fact, there is one line (and no I am not going to spoil it for you) that I literately had to put my Kindle down and decide if I wanted to continue reading.  I think the reason why I was so taken aback by it is because it was a scene with just Jared and Tate.  He wasn't at school or in front of his friends, so I didn't expect him to be so cruel in that moment.  But wow... it was a low blow.

“Isn’t it about time you fought back?”

Tatum/Tate.  I liked when she started to finally stand up for herself, but I didn't understand her self-loathing.  That is the only way I can describe it.  Toward the end when people started liking her, she has thoughts in her head about how they are only liking her because of one thing or the other.  She never accepts that people would like her or want to help her because of who she is.  I didn't like that at all.  I wanted some character growth there.  I felt that by her still having thoughts such as this, it just showed that she was still in the mindset of somebody who has been bullied.  She still felt less than what her full worth.  Yeah, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

“You've already made me cry countless times."  I raised my middle finger to him slowly, and asked, "Do you know what this is?"  I took my middle finger and patted the corner of my eye with it.  "It's me, wiping away the last tear you'll ever get.”

K.C.  She is Tate's best friend, well if you can even call her a friend.   I have a hate/hate relationship with K.C.  I did not understand her at all.  She makes some really selfish choices in Bully, and I just didn't get her.  I can't go into too much detail about why I don't like her because it will give away a large part of the overall plot, and I hate spoilers.  I tried my best to give her the benefit of the doubt, so many times, but in the end it turned out I was holding out hope for nothing.  She really disappointed me.

“This is how bullies are made.”

So yeah, sadly I am not the biggest fan of Bully.  I am hoping however that once Until You is released that I will have a change of heart... at least toward Jared.  Until you is going to be a book told from Jared's POV.  The author has said that it will have a lot of new scenes which were not in Bully, but will also have some of the important scenes from Bully re-told.  I love the male point of view, and I am hoping that with being in Jared's head it will help me understand why he did and said some of the things he said to Tate.  Maybe he can still make me love him.  Maybe.

MORE QUOTES FROM BULLY

1 comment:

  1. I'm in the middle of it and agree with everything you've said in your review. There are parts I liked and parts I hated.

    ReplyDelete

I would love to hear what you have to say! I read and try to respond to every single comment I receive. Knowing there are people out there reading is what makes this all worth it... : )