While I liked this book for the most and was captivated by the author's realistic portrayal of bullying, I must admit, this book left me with mixed feeling. It wasn't really a story about bullying, it was just about them each trying to get one up on the other. There weren't a lot of books that had this approach, making you question the morality of the characters and really raising awareness for a difficult problem. I get that our past shouldn’t hound us forever, but you should be really remorse about things you do and in a time space of more than one year you should realize that when a girl cries, she’s hurt?

At about the fifty percent mark we start to see chinks in the armor he’s erected around himself and he finally starts to actually show signs that there might be a decent human being lurking under all of that animosity. He blared music late at night so she couldn't sleep but covered for her at school when she was in trouble. Penelope can evoke such strong feelings in all her books where her writing style just absolutely CONSUMES you! Jared — Do I have to sympathize with this jerk and accept his bullying just because he was abused by his daddy and saw how his brother used to live with him and the traumatic things happened to him? In 2015 erschien dieser Roman in deutsch als Taschenbuch (inzwischen vergriffen): "Geliebter Quälgeist".Jared harassed Tate for years and yet her best friend advises her to get together with him and, when she doesn't, decides to have a go herself! At first she let him get to her,she suffered and did nothing about it until she decided enough was enough. It's not about her overall behavior with others, it's about how she sees another person in front of her. Because of that, I found it difficult to sympathize with Jared's plight and the reasons for his atrocious behavior once it was finally revealed; or, for that matter, to understand why Tate was so willing to forgive and forget all he'd done to her when he finally changed his actions.

A part of me couldn't help but try to rationalize or at least understand what was going on inside his head because the more I read, the more it was clear that his actions were not just straight up meanness. Maybe he felt stronger, wiser and could forget what happened then, but in the end I don't think either of those things work. Bully is a story of grief and teenage angst but one that highlights the complexities of forgiveness and redemption. Jared on the other hand was very tormented and conflicted, that went through a traumatic experience, but nobody deserved to be treated this way because of it.I have a lot of words to say about this and I'll try to be as constructive as I can about what went wrong with this read after I meditate a bit over it. Their books have been translated into nineteen languages and include The Fall Away Series, The Devil’s Night Series, and the stand-alones, Misconduct, Punk 57, Birthday Girl, Credence, and Tryst Six Venom. And when I find out he races cars I melted on the spot 🥵 I may or may not have a thing for guys who are into cars 🤭 Also when he stole her necklace and used it a good luck charm I cried bc it was such a sweet moment. But to come at the expense of the victim and in not so subtle terms put the responsibility on the "victim" to change the "bully"?

I know some people like that feeling because they enjoy reading books that push their boundaries and sometimes I do, too, because that's how you think about human behavior and what makes people tick. The summer of their 14th year, Jared goes to stay with his father for a few weeks and comes home different. And at the end when she got into the fight Tate over Jared was funny bc Tate made sure she dealt with her. I can't remember the last time a book kept me up all night, completely incapable of setting it down for even a second because I needed to know what happened next.Der Inhaltsangabe ist zu entnehmen, dass das Paar zunächst eng befreundet war, der Junge sich dann jedoch plötzlich dem Mädchen gegenüber wie ein Mistkerl verhält. I can't stand this Piper-Paper girl, so let me just pull her hair and stake a claim on Jared, not because he's my boyfriend, not to mention, I still haven't forgiven him, but because I love to do ICONIC SHIT. Mysterious here has his very own secret past to strip away all his faults, how perfectly understandable!

And as irked and disgusted I am about anyone, I repeat anyone, picking on someone who is weaker, I feel that there are different types of bullying. K.C actually really broke the girl code by trying to have something with Jared (as a rebound), and I hated her for justifying his bullying in front of Tate by saying HE'S NICE (yeah, girl, he might be, but not with her, so shut the fuck up), but whatever. If you love YA then you will no doubt enjoy this story, it is on the immature side of that genre so steer clear if that isn't for you.

While there were parts I wanted more from, I still can't rate it down for that simply because this book absolutely enthralled me. There were so many times when we were kids, growing up next door to each other, that I thought Jared was the greatest.