Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Book Review: The Question Authority

I feel like I'm a roll with my reading and I'm really excited about it. I hope I can finish one, maybe even two books for next week but we'll see. I'm still behind on my Goodreads goal so I really need to pick it up!
The Question Authority - Rachel Cline



Nora Buchbinder--formerly rich and now broke--would be the last woman in Brooklyn to claim #MeToo, but when a work assignment reunites her with her childhood best friend, Beth, she finds herself in a hall of mirrors. Was their eighth grade teacher Beth's lover or her rapist? Where were the grown-ups? What should justice look like, after so much time has passed? And what can Nora do, now?

Nora's memories, and Beth's, and those of their classmates, their former teacher, and members of his family, bring to light some of the ways we absorb and manage unbearable behavior. From denial to reinvention, self-pity to self-righteousness, endless questioning to intransigent certainty, readers will recognize the ripples sent into the lives of others by one broken man.


I picked this book for review because it sounded like it was going to be a timely story in line with the #metoo era. And it was. It was just really very slow and meandering and sometimes I kind of lost track of who was who and what the heck was going on.

The book focuses around Nora who through her job comes across her friend from childhood, Beth. Curiously, the case Nora is trying to settle involves a male teacher being sexually inappropriate with students and that jogs memories Nora has of a specific teacher she and Beth had as kids. Her friend Beth ended up having a sexual relationship with this teacher and at the time Nora thinks it's just gross and stupid but as an adult now, she wonders if it was really rape and if it was consensual, can really be that if one person is under age, like well under the age of 18.

My copy was 224 pages so I thought I was going to zip right through this in one sitting but no, that very much didn't happen. It's a slow read and I felt like some of it was pointless and didn't add to the story. In the beginning of the book she mentions being well off but now she's not and she can't move, etc and I just wondered.... who the heck cares? Seriously? I think it was to justify the reason she has her crappy job to the reader but I didn't even wonder why she did the work she did. It's a job, you've got bills, I get it. Once we get beyond the fluff, the story IS interesting and it does raise some debate on where the line is but also how sometimes the lines are blurred. It got me thinking about some questionable teachers I have had when I was younger but even in college, as well as the criminal justice system that is full of holes for cases like these due to the nature of mostly having little to no evidence. It's often a he said, she said situation and it's just hard to prove.

Basically, this book got me thinking about things and I really appreciated that. Overall I'm giving this one a 3 star. I liked it but I wouldn't say I really liked it.
   
*Thank you to TLC Book Tours and Red Hen Press for a review copy! All thoughts are my own and this post contains affiliate links. Happy reading!*

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