Jodi Picoult
385 pages
Rating: 10
The book The Tenth Circle held my interest from beginning to end. It is a story of a girl named Trixie, she is a 14 year old freshman at a Maine High School. Shes a straight A student who spends an hour each morning trying to master that "I just rolled out of bed look". And did I mention shes spent the last 3 months dating 17 year old Jason Underwood, the star of the hockey team, and the towns golden boy. Shes head over heels in love but things take a turn for the worst when Jason dumps her on their 3 month anniversary. Trixie becomes very depressed and takes to cutting her wrists as a way to get her mind off her heartache. Trixie takes it too far at a party and gets drunk out of her mind. By the end of the night shes near passed out on the living room floor of her friend Zephyrs house, and her ex boyfriend Jason rapes her. When Trixie is conscious again she goes home to tell her parents and goes to the hospital to have a rape kit performed. The police are called and Jason is not allowed anywhere near Trixie. Trixie starts cutting even worse than before and when she finally returns to school her locker is filled with condoms which spill out into the hallway when she opens it. Needless to say the torture from the other kids didn't stop there. They did everything from egg her house to call her cruel names as they passed her in the hallway. Trixie makes an attempt at suicide but fails. By the end of this story Jason is dead. At first the police thought it was suicide. But later evidence proved that someone pushed him off that bridge, he didn't jump willingly. Was it the father of Trixie who had brutally beaten the boy just hours before, was it Trixie who disappeared for 3 hours the night he died, or was it the mother who claimed to be at home the whole time. Read the book to find out!
In this book you will experience every emotion as if it were your own. You feel the anger of the father, the desperation of a mother who couldn't protect her daughter, and the anxiety of a girl who will be broken forever. This book is similar to The Lovely Bones, but I would consider it much better. This book keeps you hooked from beginning to end, just like all of Jodi Picoults books. You will be lead from a small town in Maine to the Alaskan tundra, home of Trixie's fathers dark and dangerous past. This book keeps you on your toes and is entirely unpredictable.
Oh my gosh!!!!! You did a fantastic job at making the end a secret and making me want to read this book! This book also kind of reminds me of Speak and how the girl was raped but this sounds like so much more of a story than that. It is so hard to think about people becoming so depressed about a break up that they will try to kill themselves. Great job, writing a review about a tough subject.
ReplyDeleteThanks. In a way a was a lot like speak, but there was a lot of family drama that surrounded the story even before she was raped. It is definitely one of the best books that I have read so far about this topic, (well, one of the most interesting, its not exactly a fun subject).
ReplyDeleteWow! Sounds like an awesome book! I loveeee Jodi Picoult. Its weird to think that people are really that mean to others. Have you read any otehr Jodi, if you have do you have a favorite? mine was The Pact. :)
ReplyDeleteGreat review Kirsten! I began reading this book in seventh grade. I learned about Trixie's fairytale relationship with an older guy, felt her heartbreak and depression, read all the risky party games she took part in but when it came to the rape and the rape test I was too disturbed to finish. Being so young I was just beginning to grasp the boyfriend concept as anything more than a best friend. I had always been petrified to enter high school thinking the huge scary men were out to get me. In my mind this subject only cemented that false impression. After having a positive experience with my freshmen year and boys I think I will give this another try. Thanks for discussing such a difficult topic Kirsten :)
ReplyDeleteThumbs Up! :D I'm reading this book at the moment and I LOVE it. When i was reading your post I didn't know whether to read the whole this, worried it might ruin the ending but you did a great job making it captivating and mysterious. I like how this book takes you to Alaska and described an amazing place as hell, it changes your outlook towards a place that might be "paradise" to someone and it means torture for another. Nice job!
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