Jennifer
Brown
ISBN:
978-0316086950
Little
Brown, 2011
Plot
Summary: Straight-A
student and tutor Alex falls hard for the new boy in school—charming and
handsome Cole. She’s assigned to help tutor him and is shocked when he shows
signs of liking her back. At first, their relationship is total bliss. She
feels like she has found someone who truly gets her. Cole loves her poetry and
he understands parental difficulties since his mom is “crazy” and his dad
pressures him a lot while Alex’s sister is actually mentally ill and her dad
doesn’t pay any attention to her not since her mother, who also had mental
problems, attempted to run away to Colorado and died in a car accident on the
way there. Unfortunately, Alex’s long-time plans with her best friends, Bethany
and Zack, to travel to Colorado as a graduation trip to try and figure out why
her mother needed to go there and abandon her family to do it causes Cole to
become jealous of their close relationship. Soon tensions between old friends
and new boyfriend turn Alex’s life into a living hell as Cole seems to not be
the perfect boyfriend she thought he was. What starts with a push turns into
pinching, put-downs, and ever escalating violent threats. Alex stays with Cole
because he always promises to change. Will Alex be able to escape the
relationship before something worse than a push happens?
Critical
Evaluation:
Bitter End is a typical story of a
girl caught in an abusive relationship. Long before Alex sees it herself, Zach
and Bethany see Cole as the bad guy he truly is and try their best to warn Alex
away from him. Sadly, Alex is so caught up in her love that she’s blind to the
reality going on around her that is common to such stories—the friendly
warnings, the ex-girlfriend who warns her, the promises of changing, the
teeter-totter affect of her feelings for him. It’s an emotional book as Alex’s
whole life is soon wrapped up in possessive Cole and when she realizes she
needs to get out she feels caught between no one to turn to and being afraid of
being looked at as the girl who got abused by her boyfriend. In an author’s
note readers will learn that Jennifer Brown actually did a thesis during her
psychology degree on abused women to see how someone could say they’d never let
a man treat them like that and then end up caught in an abusive relationship.
So Brown’s story is based in psychological fact. The book also ends with an
afterword, questions and answers on abuse, and a list of further resources.
Reader's
Annotation:
A brutally realistic story of one girl’s love and entanglement in an abusive
relationship.
Author
Information:
Two-time winner of the Erma Bombeck Global Humor Award (2005 & 2006), Brown’s
weekly humor column appeared in The
Kansas City Star for over four years until she gave it up to be a full-time
young adult novelist. Her debut novel, Hate
List received three starred reviews and was selected as an ALA Best Book
for Young Adults, a VOYA
"Perfect Ten," and a School
Library Journal Best Book of the Year. Her second novel, Bitter End received starred reviews from
Publishers Weekly and VOYA and is listed on the YALSA 2012
Best Fiction for Young Adults list. Brown writes and lives in the Kansas City, Missouri,
area with her husband and three children (Brown, n.d.).
Genre: Realistic
Curriculum
Ties: Relationship/Health
class
Booktalking
Ideas: Read
a scene where she falls for Cole. Read a scene of tension where she thinks he
will hurt her.
Reading
Level/Interest Age:
14+
Challenge
Issues: Minor
language, sexual situations, violence
Challenge
Defense: If
this book were challenged, I would make sure the library has a Challenge
Defense File ready for such a situation. Inside the Challenge Defense File,
librarians and the public could find:
·
A
copy of the American Library Association’s Library
Bill of Rights. (Can be found and printed from ALA’s website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/librarybill)
·
A
copy of the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Statement (Can be
found and printed from ALA’s
website at http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/statementspols/ftrstatement/freedomreadstatement)
·
A
copy of the library’s own selection policy (my library, the La Vista Public
Library, has a policy but it is not online so I can’t link to it as an
example).
·
A
copy of the library’s citizen’s complaint/reconsideration form (my library, the
La Vista Public Library’s, form is called the City of La Vista Service Request form).
·
Copies
of reviews—both good and bad—from reputable library and publishing services to
justify why a book was selected for inclusion in the collection. These include
not only reviews from such journals as School
Library Journal, VOYA, Horn Book, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, but also any mention of books
on YALSA lists and other copies of articles about any awards or nominations
such books may have received.
·
Include
a short rationale file for other coworkers so if the librarian in charge of
selecting materials is not available when a challenge occurs the other staff
members have some information to go by (the rational would include such
information as a short summary, what could be challenged, reviews, awards and
nominations, etc.)
·
Include
for staff members a copy of “Strategies and Tips for Dealing with Challenges to
Library Materials,” a document written by the American Library Association.
Make sure that staff reviews this document periodically so they are prepared
and know how to face such situations. (Can be found and printed from ALA’s website at http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips)
Reason
for Inclusion:
A well-written realistic novel.
References:
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