What you need to know:
- Queer love story between two teenage fugitives
- In the veins of Rory Powers and Hannah Capin
- Reimagining of Thelma and Louise
- Trigger warnings for sexual assault, allusions to child assault, threats of violence and blood
Review:
“You can threaten us all you want. You can threaten every woman you’ve ever met with your sneering voice and cold, dead, sociopathic eyes. You can even threaten my girlfriend. But know there are girls like us, waiting in the wings. Girls with knives on their fingers and razor blades for teeth. Girls, like me, who will gut you like a fish the minute you try and lay a hand on one of us ever again. You won’t know who it is until it happens. By then, it’ll be too late, the knife too deep in your intestines, the smile too bright on the girl’s face.”
What starts as a weekend getaway turns into a life on the run after a night of violence derails best friends Lux and Trixie’s summer plans. That’s the gist of Trouble Girls and as a concept, that was downright enticing to me. Who hasn’t dreamed of leaving their life behind in favour of running for their lives with their best friend after stabbing a sleazeball of a person who came on and physically hurt your best friend in a dark and dingy bar bathroom?
Too graphic? Moving on.
The vibes of the book are described as Riverdale in the Goodreads synopsis and boy, do I agree with that. Beyond the creepy, unreal feeling of this road trip that starts out as fun and escapist and turns quickly into running away from cops after Trixie stabs a guy right in the junk (can you hear me screaming with righteousness) for trying to rape her best friend, this story definitely delivered on the spooky, antsy feeling of eyes on you at all times. However, this also reminded me of Riverdale in the way it sometimes discarded or dropped storylines for the time being as if the reader (ahem, or viewer) wasn’t going to be completely confounded by the sudden change in pacing, location and subject matter. Nevertheless, quite like Riverdale, once you suspend your disbelief, you’re in for a riveting, fast-paced read.
Trixie and Lux both are deeply flawed characters which makes them incredibly relatable. Though you’re probably going to read the book and shake your head, trying to get the girls to stop running, there’s an ineffable desire to see them succeed—to outrun the cops and their old life and just find their happily ever after on the coast of Neverwhere. The seemingly unrequited crush Trixie has on Lux also added this layer of sympathy for me because I really wanted them to be the happy gay couple they deserved to be—despite the less-than-ideal circumstances.
The one thing that kept me from really loving this story was its reluctance to take a stance on what it wanted to be. We have this Riverdale vibe paired with story elements from Thelma and Louise, but we also get this mix of the #metoo movement discussion and white privilege with a touch of internalised homophobia—really, at times it felt like the story wanted to hit all the bases but that also meant that most of the coverage was pretty superficial because there simply wasn’t enough time to dig deeper.
There were some very interesting quotes that made me hope this was going to be a bit more about the #metoo movement, but it didn’t feature as much as it was used to drive home the message that this night of violence following by running for your life in a world with a cruel justice system could happen to anyone. Perhaps my expectations were a bit too high for this story, but I would have wished for a bit more in terms of resolution when it came to the “all men are hogs” narrative.
All that being said, I loved how immersive this story was—the writing draws you right into the edgy, escapist vibes and at times I felt like I was right there on the run with Trixie and Lux. There’s a cinematic feel to the narrative that might be because of the whole reimagination of Thelma and Louise, but beyond the occasional nods to the classic, this is a story that stands powerfully on its own. Anyone who’s a fan of thrilling, dark YA novels will surely devour this in one sitting!
An unapologetic and ruthless revenge fantasy mixed with a life on the run, Trouble Girls is an edgy debut novel perfect for fans of Hannah Capin and Courtney Summers.
Trouble Girls is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers like your local bookstore, as of June 1st 2021.
Will you be picking up Trouble Girls? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
A queer YA #MeToo reimagining of Thelma & Louise with the aesthetic of Riverdale, for fans of Mindy McGinnis, Courtney Summers, and Rory Power.
When Trixie picks up her best friend Lux for their weekend getaway, she’s looking to escape for a little while, to forget the despair of being trapped in their dead-end Rust Belt town and the daunting responsibility of caring for her ailing mother. The girls are packing light: a supply of Diet Coke for Lux and her ‘89 Canon to help her frame the world in a sunnier light; half a pack of cigarettes for Trixie that she doesn’t really smoke, and a knife—one she’s just hanging on to for a friend—that she’s never used before.
But a single night of violence derails their trip and will forever change the course of the girls’ lives, as they go from ordinary high schoolers to wanted fugitives. Trying to stay ahead of the cops and a hellscape of media attention, the girls grapple with an unforgiving landscape, rapidly diminishing supplies, and disastrous decisions at every turn. As they are transformed by the media into the face of a #MeToo movement they didn’t ask to lead and the road before them begins to run out, Trixie and Lux realize that they can only rely on each other, and that the love they find together is the one thing that truly makes them free.
In rushing, powerful prose Julia Lynn Rubin takes readers on “a blistering, unapologetic thrill ride” (Emma Berquis) that will leave them haunted and reeling. Trouble Girls is “a powerful, beautifully-written gut punch” (Sophie Gonzales).
