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A heartbreaking and important memoir about sexual violence at a boarding school, and the equal violence done to the victim by the school’s cover-up.

This story begins with the brutal assault, and then works back from the beginning to put Lacy’s rape in the context of the powerful, abusive and silencing environment of her prep school. Crawford writes beautifully about an ugly experience and your heart hurts for the girl who went through it. At the same time you will marvel at how strong and brave it was of her years later to write such a searing account that shows the true faces of not only of the boys who did this to her, but if a school who knew about this assault and others like it, and protected the perpetrators and silenced the victims for decades.

Since #MeToo, there have been a number of books (both memoir and fictionalized) on this topic, and it’s striking and sad how different each one is, and yet also how many similarities they share. This book is exceptionally powerful, personal and well-written. Even if you have fatigue on this subject (to which I say: let’s not, until we can stop it from happening to anyone ever again) this book is an exceptional memoir and an extremely important one. I’m very sure it will help a lot of women and girls to read. Though I find it hard at times to read books like this, I consider it important. As we’ve recently learned from #MeToo, many, many women have experienced some degree of harassment or violation in their lives. With this book, though at times painful to read, I cared so much for Lacy and understood her so well that I wanted a positive outcome for her so badly, and her compelling and honest voice kept me turning the pages. The way the book put this in context of the Kavanaugh hearings at the end was perfect and almost too much to bear.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Little, Brown and Lacy Crawford for the ARC of this excellent book.