*I was sent a copy of Rabbit & Juliet in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to HarperCollins and Rebecca Stafford for my copy of the book.*
Synopsis:
Seventeen-year-old Rabbit has been struggling to stay above water since her mom died. In the span of a year and half, her small Georgia town has become unbearably hellish: Her ex-boyfriend, resident golden boy Richard, turned into an unrelenting stalker; her friends are nonexistent; and her dad is campaigning hard for Functioning Alcoholic of the Year.
But all that changes when the sarcastic, gorgeous, and frustratingly impenetrable Juliet Bergman walks into Rabbit’s life. All hard angles and James Dean bravado, Juliet throws Rabbit a life preserver just before her depression threatened to sink her.
Then one morning, Rabbit’s ex-best-friend Sarah–Richard’s current girlfriend–shares a horrific discovery about Richard and his crew that pitches Rabbit back into darkness. The three girls vow to enact revenge on the boys for what they’ve been doing to unsuspecting girls at parties. With Juliet leading the charge and demanding blind loyalty from the girls, Rabbit falls harder for her than she thought possible. It isn’t until Rabbit is faced with a startling act of violence that she must decide how far she’s willing to go–for herself, for Juliet, and for justice–when love and grief threaten to topple everything.
Review:
I was really looking forward to reading Rabbit & Juliet because the synopsis sounded great, but sadly, the execution wasn’t, in my opinion. You can see where this book draws its influences from but it unfortunately falls short in comparison. I only finished the book because I didn’t want yet another DNF this year. I was hoping something amazing would happen in the end that would change my entire opinion of the book, it did not.
I honestly didn’t like any of the characters. They felt very flat and they were all awful in their own ways. If they happened to be complex, I wouldn’t mind this, but even Juliet was two dimensional. I’d love to talk about this in more depth but that would be difficult without giving major spoilers. Rabbit’s instant and complete obsession with Juliet got old after a while too.
Another area I don’t want to spoil is how this book ends, but I do need to comment on how satisfying it is. You don’t learn the outcome of the biggest event of the book and that’s really annoying. What was the point of this story? Nothing really happens and a lot of the more ‘action-packed’ scenes are told in passing in the past tense.
The end part that talks in the style of a movie montage would be less awkward if that happened more often throughout. The chatty style narrative is not used at any other point during the book, so it seemed very out of place.
I’d hoped for a lot more from Rabbit & Juliet but sadly, I found it a little boring. That might not be the case for you though, so I would recommend checking this out if my review hasn’t put you off and you think the synopsis sounds interesting.
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