lessthelonely
Written on Sep 29, 2021
I am not one to read books I don't enjoy. Most of the time, boring books aren't worth your time, because I believe you can do an absolute banger of a book with very little if you play your cards right. This is all subjective, we all just share our own opinions to try and find people who think like us. At times we'll just try reading book after book and it seems like nothing satisfies our taste.
I'm not saying that was happening to me, since I was reading books that might've not been the most thrilling reads ever but that were still entertaining and good to read, even if not that captivating. It was just book, after book, after book. They were romances, sure, and I do like that, but even in that they weren't really proving to be those kinds of romances that I actually do think about longly after finishing. Don't worry, some of those will be read and reviewed here.
Either way, after a bunch of reads that were nice in that At least I'm reading, I guess sort of way, I decided to grab a book that I've been meaning to read for a while, especially after enjoying the author's debut for a long while. Tonight We Rule The World is a book that had big shoes to fill after the absolute banger that Deposing Nathan was, and you can tell I'm always a bit wary of reading more books by the same author after one I enjoyed because I never know if they're going to fumble the bag or not. I hope they don't, but that's in their hands and judgment, not mine.
I'm thrilled to say that wasn't the case here.
Tonight We Rule The World once again grabs a very real subject and spins a real, tense, and, at times, exhilarating story. This isn't a surprise, since Deposing Nathan was very much like this, but this book finds a way to keep its plot fresh and incredibly interesting not by going with the expected tropes you usually get in a mystery-driven narrative but exactly by going against it.
Deposing Nathan was a book that started with a cold-open flashback a la How To Get Away With Murder style, though that show uses flashforwards. We see something that happens and we know that there's more to it than what we're being told, but context clues to decipher it fully aren't shown. Tonight We Rule The World sort of does the cold-open again, but not with a flashback. Instead of building the tension by showing us something really big happening, it doesn't even feature the inciting incident of the book, it merely sets up that: Yeah, this shit is happening.
The premise of the book is very much harrowing but it's set up very easily in the first chapter - from now on, I'll always say that Zack Smedley knows exactly how to start a book because he does! Owen, our main character was sexually assaulted during a school trip. Who did it? We don't know, and Owen doesn't want to tell anybody, but he does know one thing: he doesn't want his girlfriend, Lily, to find out about it, which gets extremely hard when this is reported to the school and they're forced to take action.
A lot of moving parts make this book, and I'm going to tell them to you so you know what to expect: the first main mystery is who assaulted Owen, more on that in a bit; then, we got the school's investigation that is actively making Owen's wish to keep the assault under wraps harder with each passing day and, finally, Owen's juxtaposition with his father, Steve, and his family life.
I can't talk about much out of the who assaulted Owen part outside of its execution: I was hoping to find this out in the end, just like in Deposing Nathan, but no. This shit is revealed soon in the book, and this mystery gives way into a different theme. The assault is depicted but I don't think it was done with ill-intent or even in a distasteful manner. What would be distasteful, you ask? Well, if it was shock-thirsty. For example, the TV adaptation of Game of Thrones has always been quite shock-thirsty in its rape scenes, in that "you can't look away" or "you have to look away" way, always justifying it with "Oh, it's for character development". That doesn't happen here: it's uncomfortable to read and painfully chilling but it doesn't shy away from showing us that there's no reason for this outside of a very clear choice not to care for consent.
I can't talk about that anymore without spoiling what is the main course of the book, so just take my word for it: it's done respectfully, in a way that shows the pain and the trauma and explores so realistically and with a lot of nuances added to it.
One of the best but at the same time kind of weakest parts of the book is the friend group by Owen: you can tell just how much Owen likes these characters, even if they don't have much time to shine outside of some banter scenes that are very funny in its own right, but then get a little sidetracked for the rest of the plot to take place. This is fine, but considering there's a scene where we're supposed to feel a lot for Owen as he separates from his friend group, that scene could've made me cry and it didn't, and I think that adding a bit more personality and moments with the characters could've fixed that.
But now let's talk about my favorite part of the book. Owen's relationship with his father is center-stage in this book. Steve takes a very... toxic role in Owen's life when the investigation on the assault happens - this man will stop at nothing to know who assaulted his kid. I admit, at first, I did enjoy his demeanor - he's presented as a "take no bullshit", "clearly misses being in the military" kind of man, and we can see how this bleeds out into truly toxic behavior. Owen's mom is sort of irrelevant for most of the book, which I guess is to be expected since she was Steve's victim too.
What starts as something you enjoy since Steve tells shit like it is from the very beginning, almost like a prophecy teller to the reader and characters, becomes a very tense and entertaining to read drawn-out fight between him and Owen. And here's the thing, I want to make it clear: this is not entertaining to read because you get fun out of reading tense and stressful situations. It's entertaining because it's painfully realistic, so it makes you a bit anxious and when I'm reading mysteries and thrillers, that's what I want. I want to sweat. I want my throat to be in a knot. It sounds not fun at all, but it is fun because it's like watching a dumpster fire that just gets bigger and bigger and consumes everything around it.
The plot is messy but it's not messily written; in fact, it's masterfully written and there are incredibly powerful moments here. I'm going to tell you about one because it made me go from hating Steve to respecting him: Steve does an ultimatum to Owen saying You either tell me who assaulted you, or I'm going to ruin this one place I built for you to have your safe-space. And this creates the first-ever moment that Owen stands up to his dad and sticks his feet in the mud, not budging.
I'm not going to tell you what happens next, but that scene was fucking incredible. I literally said "Aight, I respect it".
Finally, there's what seems like a romantic arc for Owen which is very low-key in the book, which was also pretty enjoyable but I wasn't that invested in it - I don't think I was meant to either.
This is a book that masterfully deals with tricky subjects and if you've experienced anything like the things it depicts, you're going to be losing your mind at how realistic these portrayals are. In my case, that was the manipulation and toxicity in a family environment.
So, after much pondering, I decided to give this book 5 stars. Mr. Zack is now one of my favorite authors and I'm pretty sure I'll read anything he puts out. Check the trigger warnings for this book before anything.