Hurt

by Tabitha Suzuma

At seventeen, Matheo Walsh is Britain’s most promising diving champion. He is wealthy, popular - and there's Lola, the girlfriend of his dreams.

But then there was that weekend. A weekend he cannot bring himself to remember. All he knows is that what happened has changed him.

Mathéo is faced with the most devastating choice of his life. Keep his secret, and put those closest to him in terrible danger. Or confess, and lose Lola for ever . . .

• ISBN10: 184941520X
• ISBN13: 9781849415200
• Publish Date: 7 May 2015 (first published 5 September 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Children's UK
• Imprint: Definitions
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

"You cannot undo the past; you can only learn to live with it, find some way of making peace with it, and move on." (Mathéo Walsh)

I put this book down a long time ago with the intention of picking it up again only when I was in the mood for it. I only survived finishing Hurt by skimming through copious amounts of descriptions of houses, skies, trees and water along with 1000 metaphors on every single page. Suzuma has an amazingly lyrical writing style, but unfortunately that type of writing goes way over my head. I'm more of a simplistic, straight-forward writing style type of girl. That's why I felt extremely detached and disconnected to what was going on and the present third-person tense DID NOT help at all.

Hurt starts off with the main character, Matheo, waking up in his trashed up room trying to piece together what happened to him. We get a brief flashback of his life before his room got destroyed along with a look into his present life being affected by what he can't remember. It was the question of "What happened to Matheo?" that sparked my interest in continuing the story. Matheo is also a competitive diver and his sporting career and lifestyle is also interesting to read about.

There is also an "epic" romance between Matheo and his girlfriend, Lola, that plays a huge role in Hurt and is part of the rising action in this book. However, Matheo and Lola are extremely shallow characters and their personalities are not fleshed out. This shallowness makes their "epic" and "unbreakable" love unrealistic and cringe worthy.

Hurt does deal with an important issue that needs to be given more awareness. This issue is a spoiler and does provide most of the conflict in the book, so I won't divulge. However, I felt that this issue wasn't dealt with properly. Maybe it is my detachment or my lack of interest in Lola and Matheo's romance, but I didn't feel any sort of rage or sympathy that I should have been feeling towards the events that occur.

Hurt deals with an extremely important issue that needs to be made more aware in present society. However, the message and awareness that Hurt tries to bring about is marred by an extremely descriptive writing style, detachment and a cringe worthy romance that took center stage.