Exit, Pursued by a Bear
Ratings10
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings10
Average rating4.2
At cheerleading camp, Hermione is drugged and raped, but she is not sure whether it was one of her teammates or a boy on another team--and in the aftermath she has to deal with the rumors in her small Ontario town, the often awkward reaction of her classmates, the rejection of her boyfriend, the discovery that her best friend, Polly, is gay, and above all the need to remember what happened so that the guilty boy can be brought to justice.
Reviews with the most likes.
One of the toughest books to read because of the subject matter: rape.
This book doesn't whisper that it's about rape. It tells you like it is, rape is a terrible crime and shouldn't be avoided in conversations.
People can't say the word rape when talking about it. Just say it and acknowledge that it happens.
Liked Hermione's clear eyed pragmatism mixed with hopefulness. Very much liked that Johnston didn't have her waddling about her choice for abortion after her rape. Forced chooses aren't reflected enough in teen books. Loved normalized gay secondary characters. Canadian setting will be slightly unfamiliar to teens, but not jarringly so.
I loved this and couldn't put it down, which is a little strange since it's not exactly a page-turning mystery. (There is a slight mystery aspect, but that's not what kept me reading.) I've read reviews about how this isn't exactly realistic, and in the author's note Johnston herself notes that this is sadly a bit of a fantasy in that after Hermione is raped, she's met with near-universal belief and support from friends, family, school, police, etc and that sadly is not the norm. On some level it reminds me of [b:Boy Meets Boy 23228 Boy Meets Boy David Levithan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1356335082s/23228.jpg 1118789] and how David Levitan wanted to write a super happy book where queer teens can be out and happy with no societal issue, even though that was deffo not the norm when it was written (and isn't now even though progress has been made). the ease with which Hermione gets an abortion is I think more Canadian than just fantasy life, but also, whew.So with that in mind I think this is a great book to exist and perhaps provide a model for how people should respond to rape victims rather than a brutally realistic read. (I think there's a place for brutally realistic survival stories too but that doesn't have to be every story.)That aside, I just loved Hermione's voice in this so much and I was really rooting for her. She has a really wry self-aware sense of humo(u)r (she's Canadian), and I love her friendships with Polly and the rest of her team too.
