TELL ME WHEN YOU FEEL SOMETHING by Vicki Grant
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I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from the publisher to write this review.
Davida has known Viv for seven years. She knows Viv wouldn’t have taken Ecstasy. She doesn’t even drink! But she can tell the cop doesn’t believe her. He just thinks Viv is another drugged up kid ended up in a coma through her own bad choices. And maybe he’s right. Davida’s seen the videos of the party. It’s obvious the pill Viv took wasn’t a multivitamin. As Davida struggles to come to terms with her own misconceptions about her friend, her own musings and the police officer’s investigation keep circling back to the hospital where Davida and Viv both worked as simulated medical patients and the unconventional relationships between teen volunteers and staff.
This one is a page-turner! A self-professed #MeToo book, TELL ME WHEN YOU FEEL SOMETHING needs a trigger warning for scenes of sexual assault. Though the rape survivor spends the book in a coma and is unable to pursue justice for herself, the heroine is also a young woman whom the sexual predator has been grooming. There’s plenty of misdirection and suspense that make the book difficult to put down, but I missed a certain amount of character depth found in other #MeToo books–even thrillers (think: GROWN)–possibly due to the split of narration between the survivor, her friend, a boyfriend, and police interrogation transcripts. But as a thriller, it delivered, and I’d recommend it to mature fans of the genre.
Susan the Librarian 