Damage

by Eve Ainsworth

[Leah]

Damage by Eve Ainsworth has had quite a bit of buzz on social media and, before we go any further, let me tell you that if you’re triggered by self-harm, this is probably not the book for you. (And before anyone screams SPOILERS!!!! at me, self-harm is mentioned on the back of the book.) Damage is an incredibly quick read, I devoured it in just over an hour and while it was an interesting look at self-harm, I also feel like it could have been so much more.

First up: Gabi is incredibly disrespectful to her family. Now, before anyone says “All teens are disrespectful” that’s not true. While I understand a lot of teens are, I was brought up not to be, and I don’t know why parents in YA novels just accept their kids screaming at them, calling them a “stuck up, skinny bitch” or throwing a box at their face. If I did even one of those things, my mother would kill me, literally, and rightfully so because I was brought up not to act that way to my parents. To have respect. To know that if I DID do something like that (which would be so out of character for me) I would be punished. Yet, Gabi gets away with it. ALL three of those things. I mean, what? Have we really come to a point where kids can just do whatever they like without action or consequences? Where parents are too weak to actually parent?

I also would have liked more pages in this book, to accurately portray self-harm. I’m not saying it was inaccurately portrayed (I don’t know enough about self-harm to say that for sure) it felt rushed. The book is only 280 pages long with wide spaces around the edges of each page, so I would have liked a more in-depth look at a) why Gabi was self-harming, yes there’s a traumatic incident referred to, but what was it about that traumatic incident that made her feel like she had evil inside her? I didn’t get that part and b) the after-effects once family members and friends get involved and knew what Gabi was doing. It kind of felt like, “Well, you’re doing this thing *Shrugs*” almost like it wasn’t really happening. Gabi’s mum learns of her self-harm and doesn’t somehow drag her kicking and screaming to a doctor? Or a counsellor? Or removes all blades from the house? Again, I don’t know, maybe parents don’t do that. But it all felt a bit shallow, even more so since Gabi freely admits that, when a girl in their group self-harmed, she thought it was for attention, etc, until that girl was phased out (which kinda seemed like bullying?!). It just didn’t feel right.

I wanted to really like Damage. I wanted it to be hard-hitting and impactful, to give me a good look at self-harm and what makes someone do that, but instead I found Gabi wanting. I wanted to like her so hard, but she was just an awful person. She acts like her Granddad was this saviour, this hero, that her mother was clearly hating on her father for no reason, when Gabi knew nothing, as her mother told her. She basically tried to belittle her mother’s pain, her mother’s past. All because her granddad took her to the beach or let her practice her skate-boarding. Gabi goes on and on about how she’s the outsider, how no one listens to her, and then turns around and doesn’t listen to anybody, including her mother. She was a bit of a hypocrite and while I have no doubt she was hurting over everything that had happened, and I did feel for her, I also felt like she needed to look at her own actions, because everything she accused her mother of doing, she did herself to her mother.

The worst bit for me, the absolute worst bit, was how Gabi lets herself be treated by Alfie. I've said my pieces on Gabi, how I feel she was disrespectful and treated her parents poorly, but she also lets herself be treated poorly. Alfie and Gabi skate together, they're friends and there's a hint of something more, and towards the end of the book there's a party and at the party there's an incident and Alfie blows up at Gabi. He says some mean, hurtful things; things that are not acceptable, and yet Gabi doesn't actually tell him to sling his hook.

I just... yeah. This book didn't really work for me.