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Readers' rating:
Published Mar 2023
384 pages
Genre: Poetry & Novels in Verse
Publication Information
This searing and intimate novel in verse follows a sixteen-year-old girl coping with sexual abuse as she grapples with how to reclaim her story, her anger, and her body in a world that seems determined to punish her for the sin of surviving.
Sixteen-year-old Alicia Rivers has a reputation that precedes her. But there's more to her story than the whispers that follow her throughout the hallways at school—whispers that splinter into a million different insults that really mean: a girl who has had sex. But what her classmates don't know is that Alicia was sexually abused by a popular teacher, and that trauma has rewritten every cell in her body into someone she doesn't recognize. To the world around her, she's been cast, like the mythical Medusa, as not the victim but the monster of her own story: the slut who asked for it.
Alicia was abandoned by her best friend, quit the track team, and now spends her days in detention feeling isolated and invisible. When mysterious letters left in her locker hint at another victim, Alicia struggles to keep up the walls she's built around her trauma. At the same time, her growing attraction to a new girl in school makes her question what those walls are really keeping out.
"Emotionally raw verse critically portrays one teenager's experience dealing with the aftermath of assault, and provides a sharp look into cultures built on oppressing survivors' voices....both vulnerable and fierce, Cole boldly examines agency, bodily autonomy, and internalized misogyny." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Dazzling with clarity, blistering with anger....In shimmering verse, Cole breathes life into each young woman....This book is as wide in scope as it is economical in its language. Illuminating." - Kirkus Reviews
"Cole's novel in verse is a raw and uncompromising view into the sexualization of young women. She peels back the layers of Alicia's trauma, fully immersing us in a world where we are cradled in Alicia's pain and then her subtle pinpricks of joy." - Booklist
"Dear Medusa is a searing read, both emotional and so, so smart. Olivia A. Cole takes on questions of systemic sexism and racism in masterful verse—you ache alongside her characters as they learn to speak the language of justice. Dear reader: get ready to have your heart beautifully broken." - Brittany Cavallaro, New York Times bestselling author of A Study in Charlotte
"Furious and gorgeous and raw—an unflinching exploration not only of a teenage girl's anger and grief but her capacity for love and joy....Alicia's voice will not turn you to stone; it will sink its teeth into you and not let go." - Nina Varela, author of the Crier's War duology
This information about Dear Medusa was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Olivia A. Cole is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky. Her essays have been published by Bitch Media, Real Simple, the Los Angeles Times, HuffPost, Teen Vogue, Gay Mag, and more. She teaches creative writing at Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts, where she guides her students through not only poetry and fiction but also considerations of the world and who they are in it. She is the author of several books for children and adults.
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