Title: Tradition
Author: Brendan Kiely
Genre: YA fiction
I’m not sure how this book ended up on my radar, but I was definitely expecting more. The entire “smash the patriarchy” genre is critical these days, but this book just falls short, which is really disappointing. The characters were really flat, and I never really connected with any of them. The dialogue was stilted, and the plot was too subdued for the importance of this subject. All that said, the events of the book reflect society, but society is a hundred times worse than these events.
From Goodreads: Jules Devereux just wants to keep her head down, avoid distractions, and get into the right college, so she can leave Fullbrook and its old-boy social codes behind. She wants freedom, but ex-boyfriends and ex-best friends are determined to keep her in place. Jamie Baxter feels like an imposter at Fullbrook, but the hockey scholarship that got him in has given him a chance to escape his past and fulfill the dreams of his parents and coaches, whose mantra rings in his ears: Don’t disappoint us.
When Jamie and Jules meet, they recognize in each other a similar instinct for survival, but at a school where girls in the student handbook are rated by their looks, athletes stack hockey pucks in dorm room windows like notches on a bedpost, and school-sponsored dances push first year girls out into the night with senior boys, the stakes for safe sex, real love, and true friendship couldn’t be higher.
As Jules and Jamie’s lives intertwine, and the pressures to play by the rules and remain silent about the school’s secrets intensify, they see Fullbrook for what it really is. That tradition, a word Fullbrook hides behind, can be ugly, even violent. Ultimately, Jules and Jamie are faced with the difficult question: can they stand together against classmates—and an institution—who believe they can do no wrong?
The senior athletic boys are just garbage humans. They have zero redeeming qualities and prey upon all the females. Jules is just “the crazy girl” and is dismissed by just about all staff and students. Jamie is expected to live up to the jock standard, but doesn’t want to. And the way they rebel at the end was just so lame. At one point Jules is assaulted (probably not a TW because it’s stopped almost as it starts) and then rumors spread, of course. But instead of turning to her friends, she just shuts them out and wallows in sadness. This might be a realistic reaction, but it’s not much of a helpful one for girls reading this. If I wanted my teenage kids to read something realistic about how awful the world of high school can be, this one just didn’t cut it.
Pleasant Nights 