"You turn eighteen, and they find you. There is no other recruitment. Eighteen - old enough to have had your heart hardened, young enough that blood still passes through it. Not everyone is recruited, of course, but the gangs are smart. They pick people with nothing to lose. The ones who are angry. Those who join San Francisco's infamous Red Bridge Wars do so willingly."The ultimate war between the haves and the have-nots has waged on the streets of San Fransico for ten years. Three gangs run by teenagers are the players: Herons, Boars, and the mysterious Stags. The Herons are the tech companies and their families; their power and wealth drastically changing the city and displacing the poor. The Boars fight back, largely with violence. And the Stags? Well, some people say they don't even exist.
The book begins on the night of Valerie's eighteenth birthday. Her younger brother was killed in crossfire by one of the gangs two years earlier, and she is determined to join the Wars to find out who is responsible to exact her revenge. But instead of being recruited by the Herons like she always thought (and thus being separated from her ex-boyfriend), she joins the Stags.
I really fell for Valerie and the rest of the Stags, especially Micah and Jax. Valerie is biracial (half Filipino and there is Tagalog in the book) and comes from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, which compared to her ex-boyfriend's family never felt like much. I appreciate that she doesn't deny her privilege when confronted by her fellow Stags, who for the most part grew up poor. I wish there was stronger LGBTQIAP+ representation. One of the stags, Nianna, tells Valerie that she is "queer and damn proud of it," but other than that line there isn't a mention of what her identity explicitly or implicitly is.
Losing her brother really affected Valerie; her grief and guilt run through the book. Major content warning for self-harm. She bakes in order to quiet the anxiety and occupy her thoughts, but she is also a cutter and there is on-page cutting in the book. As someone who has struggled with this for most of her life, I am not sure how I feel about the self-harm representation. I was able to comprehend the motivation because I have experienced it, but I don't know the motivations were really explored in text. I wish that the way Valerie talks about baking is how she would discuss the cutting. It just felt very surface level to me, and with something as serious as mental health and self-harm, I wish the representation were better than just... being there.
"Live fast, fight for what we want, then die and be remembered for all we accomplished."Despite this being a heavy book of loss, grief, and vengeance, it is also filled with hope. Of the little things we can do to make a difference: frequenting mom-and-pop shops when we can, questioning the status quo and, researching things for yourself instead of believing what you are told. It's a love letter to civil disobedience and paints a picture of potential ways bad actors can ruin the message.
"I figure, if anything, the city's myriad ailments help the Wars. It's like a cancer - there's no easy fix, and while the state and local government tangles itself in red tape, the Wars go on as a newer symptom masked by others."The book feels very punk rock to me, and nails the teenage optimism and fire to change the world for the better. They haven't been hardened by the reality of the world and complacent to let it simply continue as it always has. I haven't read The Outsiders, but this does remind me of my punk youth... and the Stags' methods for addressing the growing social inequality in their city reminds me a bit of SLC Punk. *choked sobbing*
The writing is gripping and engaging, once I started the book I was hooked until the end. It's a fast-paced read and a solid debut. As a note, I think the publisher got the genre classification wrong. The book is listed as a Thriller in their catalog, but it's really more of a contemporary story with elements of a dystopia setting. There is the mystery of who murdered Valerie's brother at the center of the story, but don't go in expecting an edge-of-your-seat thriller.
"Society says we're bad, but we're doing what the police can't and the other gangs won't [...] We're smarter than they are, and doing the right thing.'"At the heart, this is a touching story of love, sacrifice, and revenge in a city at war between the haves and the have nots. San Francisco is a city where gentrification is evident on every street corner thanks to the growth of Silicon Valley, so it is the perfect setting for this story. Price did a fantastic job transporting the reader to the streets of the City, and she is definitely an author to watch. I look forward to reading her next book!
Content warnings: anxiety, child death, depression, grief, gun violence, mention of suicide, self-harm (on-page), underage drinking and drug use
eARC provided by the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for my honest review. Quotations are from an uncorrected proof and subject to change upon final publication.
Blog | Twitter | Pinterest