Michigan vs. The Boys

I have never in my life felt the pure anger towards fictional characters that I had towards 98% of the men and boys in this book. Carrie S. Allen did a great job writing vile villains because wow it’s been about a month since I read this book and I can still feel my blood start to boil when I recall what happens.

Michigan has just been crowned the assistant captain of the girl’s hockey team at her high school only to then find out that it has been cut. So, after some motivation from an extremely talented and cute boy, she tries out for the boy’s team and makes it.

And so begins my decent into madness and fury.

Michigan deals with bullying that is unfortunately very realistic. She is verbally bullied, physically assaulted and more, all while the head coach does nothing but insinuate that she had it coming. Listen. I know men like this exist in the world, I deal with some of them on a daily basis. But I cannot begin to express to you the pure rage that I was feeling. A young girl is being subjected to so much violence and the person who is supposed to be looking out for her and protecting her is telling her that she’s responsible for it. *Cue screams*

This book is incredibly well written and is perfect for, I would say eighth (maybe seventh depending on the person) to eleventh grade kids. The writing doesn’t go as far as say a new adult novel might, the description of the violence is kept at a PG-13 level which is actually what I would rate this. PG-13. If you’d let someone see a PG-13 movie, then they can read this.

This book will be very hard for people to read, and for many of them I say good, hopefully it will be enlightening and build some empathy in you. For some I say, do what she finally does.