All The Rage by Courtney Summers

Gut Instinct Rating - 3

Characters - 4

Believability for type and topics - 2.5

Similarity to other books - 3

Writing Style - 5

Excitement Factor - 3.5

Story Line - 3

Title Relevance - 4

Dust Jacket Art - 4

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.85. I think it was more deserving of a 3.56.

Emoji Meter: 😑 😶 😯

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Published in 2015

Pages: 317

Publishing Company: St. Martin's Griffin

Number of books by author: 10 Novels

Genre: YA Fiction

Let me start off by saying I've never completed a Courtney Summers book yet. And this was the first, and very likely the last. My complaint with her books is always that they are so underwhelming, and this was no different. The only way I would recommend this book is if there was a younger teenager who wanted to get into crime, but maybe wasn't ready for the grime-and-gore that comes with some of the adult fiction crime books. This book had a good blend of crime and youth, but otherwise, it struck out on most accounts. The characters were the same as they were in the last three books I read in a high school setting. Boo-hoo, everyone hates me; boo-hoo, the boy I like is older and we're fighting; boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-fucking-hoo. Jesus. Did we all whine that much? (I did, but I blame that on external side effects of being a teenager. I don't remember anyone I know being that incredibly mopey. Including the teens that I currently help with their sexual assault. It's just incredibly annoying. So, basically, I hated the main character, Romy... (don't get me started on what an incredibly.. ______ name that is. How do you even pronounce that?) Why do authors pick names that are not universally easy to pronounce. I know that sounds incredibly -white-privileged, but it's not intended to be. The entire book, I debated how to pronounce her name. So maybe I just have problems. That could be a more likely scenario. (My great debate was whether it was ROW-ME or RAW-ME.... neither are popular, but according to the internet, it's ROW-ME, which then sounds like a sexual innuendo that you can't get out of your head.) Anywho, the remaining characters were all kind of annoying. I didn't like that the disability of Todd was brushed over so much when it could've been an incredibly important moment for an author to spotlight invisible illness, so that just angered me. It also gave a bad name for country-people/small-town-people. They don't all just sit around drinking beer and not

everyone is in the sheriff's pocket. Just, come on. Use your imagination, here! It was all but believable. The party taking place as a "school" event, without supervision, where the principal even has to mention staying sober - it would never fly. It might be a tradition, but it would've never been hosted through the school, and the parents would've sued the holy-hell outta the school/district by the end of this book if we were talking realistically. All the trouble that Romy (here we go again with the naming business) got into, both at work, school, and with the police, you'd think that there'd be more punishment. It all seemed a little strange that nothing ever came of any of that? And who reports a car stolen without checking with their step-daughter or wife first? SERIOUSLY?! The bullying. Teachers know what's going on. They're not stupid. They hear more than you know, see more than they let on, and have more gossip than the students. There's no way any of this [bullying] would've been tolerated as much as it was. It was just so unbelievable it was kind of disgusting how fictional it all was. It wasn't unique... actually, it felt like about 10 books jammed together, which was even more annoying. It wasn't until about half way through that I realized that there was virtually no story line. I mean, we start out with a rape victim, right? Great. We're on page 1. Then page 105, someone's missing. How do we go from rape victim being the main character to a missing person being the star? And they're "unconnected" for the most part. It just didn't blend well. The stories were so smashed together, I wonder if the editor even bothered reading the book. At least the writing was smooth. There weren't any large gaps in time missing, other than what was intended; no typos, which is a surprise considering how messy the rest of the book was. Everything was versed well, but for being so country, I was kind of surprised the language wasn't a little more so. The book was basically boring. If I didn't have a limited number of books at my disposal, I might've put it down? Although, I did have a high interest in knowing what happened to the two main characters - because we did have two stories going on. But otherwise, the title didn't really make sense? I mean, it was fine. It fits, I suppose. But, it fits one story more so than the other... It could make sense for the second half, but it's certainly a stretch. The artwork wasn't horrible... just not a big fan of girls in front of trees right now since that's been on the last like, 3 books I've read.... the lack of creativity is killing me.

Basically, what I'm saying here is this book sucked. It was just bad. It was uneventful, it wasn't thought out well, there was no cohesive tone. If I had to write a true report, or provide some kind of demonstration on this and this was my last night to do it, my presentation would be more questions than answers... it would be a reverse analysis, on why this-or-that wasn't present. My focus would be on the author's decisions, not the story.