Rage: A Love Story by Julie Anne Peters

Rage is a love story, as the title suggests. But this isn't your ordinary boy-meets-girl love story. First of all, it's a girl-meets-girl love story. But it is so much more than that. As the story begins, we meet Johanna, the patient, reliable, go-to heroine. She's in love with Reeve. Reeve is the opposite of Johanna. She's dangerous, alluring, and mysterious. The story proceeds, and we find ourselves learning about Reeve's abusive family, which leads her to abusing Johanna.

I wanted to love this story, I really did! And I did love it in a way. I don't know what it was about the writing, but there was just something that made it hard for me to get into the story. I found Johanna to be a bit weak, because of all the shit she puts up with. All her friends and family try to warn her to keep away from Reeve, because they don't want to see her get hurt. Johanna ignores them, and chooses Reeve over them. She abuses Johanna, but Johanna claims that Reeve really loves her, she's just scared. Johanna is blind, and loves Reeve. She'll do anything for her, whether it's losing the people and things that are important to her, skipping school, or losing her job. I also don't know how much she sees into Reeve's character. All the time she describes Reeve, it seems mostly physical, not about what's inside. I personally think she's in love with the idea of Reeve, not Reeve herself. You have to understand that the situation that she lives in majorly influences this though. Her life is hard, and it's understandable that this is the type of person she is. The characters are very realistic though. It's easy to understand them and see that they're not perfect at all.

I liked the idea of the book, how it was a love story, but it was a lot more than that. It's about relationships, abuse, loss, and family. There were moments I liked, but I found this book a bit difficult to read because I didn't find myself relating with Johanna very much. I liked it because it was unique. Honestly, how many books about abuse are there? And how many of those have LGBT protagonists? And how many of them are teen girls? So this book fills that little spot.

The ending was a bit of a let-down, but I'm glad it was how it was because it was realistic. I wouldn't really classify this book more as a LGBT book, but more as an abuse book. It's about both, but I think it's more the latter.

Rage isn't a happy book, it's a darker one. It's about abuse. Everyone is either the victim or the abuser, or both. It's painful and sad to think about, but possibly a necessary read.

I also felt a bit confused with the end, like I was missing some parts. Such as what was in Robbie's case and the hospice. Everything just seemed a little bit cut off, with no folow up.

I really wanted to like this story, but I'm going to have to go with 2.5 out of 5 stars on this one.