This isn’t my usual type of read, and I was pleasantly surprised with how much I loved it. Violetta’s struggles in incarceration broke my heart and I loved the dual POV with Letta and Vin so we could see what she felt and how Vin and the family felt. The themes of grief and forgiveness are the main topics.
Letta’s life is forever changed when she decides to get in a car after she’d been drinking with her boyfriend. She should have been watching her little sister. Next thing she knows, she’s in the hospital and her sister is dead. Her parents can either forgive her for her crime and she can come home, or she can be sent to upstate prison. The third option is the Trials, where she will be set out to do tasks in order to prove she is worthy of the forgiveness of her family. While she is in jail, her family falls apart without her little sister.
I really enjoyed the idea of the Trials. Reading about it for the first time. I expected a sort of Hunger Games like event that would determine if a criminal would be able to be set free. However, thought of the victims having the power to punish the perpetrators is both interesting and terrifying, especially when the “victim” isn’t really a victim. The direction it ended up taking was even better. Did the Trials fail in their rehabilitation? Were they there to rehabilitate or humiliate and torture those kids in jail? I appreciated the look of how folks are treated in jail, POC especially. The Trials was supposed to make it better but it’s even more broken.
One of the little things I liked was how nobody reacted badly to Vin being gay. His parents accepted him and his friends in school and on his team accepted him. I wish we could have gotten more of him and Levi. The scene with Letta at the school with her ex talking about her has my blood boiling. I was literally trying not to scream in my frustration. I was so glad she has a good friend there who was able to stay with her and help her through what she was going through, because her family wasn’t.
The ending was great and bittersweet. Sometimes grief will never go away and nobodies lives will be the same after what happened. All you can do is move forward and remember the person you’ve lost.
Letta’s life is forever changed when she decides to get in a car after she’d been drinking with her boyfriend. She should have been watching her little sister. Next thing she knows, she’s in the hospital and her sister is dead. Her parents can either forgive her for her crime and she can come home, or she can be sent to upstate prison. The third option is the Trials, where she will be set out to do tasks in order to prove she is worthy of the forgiveness of her family. While she is in jail, her family falls apart without her little sister.
I really enjoyed the idea of the Trials. Reading about it for the first time. I expected a sort of Hunger Games like event that would determine if a criminal would be able to be set free. However, thought of the victims having the power to punish the perpetrators is both interesting and terrifying, especially when the “victim” isn’t really a victim. The direction it ended up taking was even better. Did the Trials fail in their rehabilitation? Were they there to rehabilitate or humiliate and torture those kids in jail? I appreciated the look of how folks are treated in jail, POC especially. The Trials was supposed to make it better but it’s even more broken.
One of the little things I liked was how nobody reacted badly to Vin being gay. His parents accepted him and his friends in school and on his team accepted him. I wish we could have gotten more of him and Levi. The scene with Letta at the school with her ex talking about her has my blood boiling. I was literally trying not to scream in my frustration. I was so glad she has a good friend there who was able to stay with her and help her through what she was going through, because her family wasn’t.
The ending was great and bittersweet. Sometimes grief will never go away and nobodies lives will be the same after what happened. All you can do is move forward and remember the person you’ve lost.