"It was strange how words meant something when they came out of your mouth. Inside your head they were safe and silent, but once they were outside, people grabbed hold of them." (Mikey McKensie)
You Against Me centers around two people, Mikey and Ellie. After a party one night, Karyn, Mikey's sister, accuses Ellie's brother, Tom, of rape. In order to take revenge on Tom and defend his sister, Mikey starts getting closer to Ellie so that he can find out more about Tom. However, Mikey and Ellie start falling for each other.
You Against Me handles the topic of rape in a nuanced manner. In this book, there is no such thing as black and white and it's difficult to discern the truth from the lies. You don't know who is telling the truth, Karyn or Tom. You Against Me doesn't just deal with sexual assualt, but also rape culture and slut-shaming.
"No one would ever speak to her the way the cops spoke to Karyn, asking her if she'd slept with Tom before or if she usually got so drunk at parties." (Mikey McKensie)
You Against Me deals largely with the families of the victim and the accused, how they are affected and how they choose to deal with it. I am frustrated with the way certain family members deal with the accusation and victimisation against their sibling and children, but I could still understand the motivation for their actions. I also appreciate that Mikey's family and Ellie's family came from different socio-economic backgrounds to show the different types of help and treatment that are exposed to them.
The characters in You Against Me are unlikable, but extremely believable. Mikey and Ellie are pretty terrible people who do some terrible things, but are still seen as human beings who don't know how to deal with what is going on in their world. Ellie's reactions towards her brother is extremely real. He's her brother. She loves him and remembers all the times he cared for her, but she can't help wondering if there is another side to him that she's only seen glimpses of.
Mikey and Ellie's relationship is believable and the conflicting feeling that they have towards each other are understandable, but their relationship is a plot device that is used to make the book more dramatic and I couldn't believe that their relationship was love.
You Against Me also has a open ending. This ending ties up the main plot of the book, but it doesn't deal with what I'm really interested in finding out, the outcome of the court case.
You Against Me is difficult to review and my review is extremely vague because I can't talk about this book without giving everything away. It's a book that deals with sexual assualt, has believable characters reactions from unlikable characters and revolves around a "forbidden" romance.
"It seemed strange that two people could be in the very same place and see totally different things." (Mikey McKensie)