Review by New York Times Review
Try to be brave, grown-ups. O'Neill's second novel may be scary, but it is riveting and essential. Teenagers will recognize its difficult truth and devour it - behind your backs, if need be. Emma O'Donovan, a gorgeous 18-year-old Irish girl, is a snob and a boyfriend stealer. She wields her sexuality like somebody waving a gun. At a party, she drinks heavily, ingests a mysterious drug and hooks up with a local soccer star. And then she is gang-raped and dumped unconscious on her porch. Emma remembers nothing, a small mercy. But photos of the attack have been uploaded to a Facebook page called "Easy Emma," on which cruel comments bloom by the minute. Her big brother sees it. Her mam. Even her beloved dad, who can't bear to look at her now. Because the rape comes back to Emma only in flashes, "Asking for It" depicts less violence against women than many TV shows. O'Neill is most interested in capturing the voice in Emma's head: She's so traumatized that her first instinct is to apologize to her attackers, and she's buried under so much shame that she feels as if "the bones of my skeleton are shifting, moving in like a cage around my heart, squeezing all the air out of my lungs." You may be staggered by Emma's inability to make a self-respecting decision, even as her story goes international. But you'll be lit up with pain and rage on her behalf, and grateful for the few who stand by her. Emma always seems incontrovertibly real. What's terrifying is that the world she lives in - full of misogyny and deep, communal denial - does too.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
Thanks to a surfeit of alcohol and drugs, gorgeous, 18-year-old Emma can't remember what happened that Saturday night, but everyone else knows when photographs start appearing on the Internet showing her being sexually abused and humiliated by a group of her male friends. Yet try though she might, Emma still can't remember that evening. Nevertheless, the boys are charged with rape, and, as a result, Emma becomes a pariah in her small Irish hometown, her Facebook page filled with hate messages calling her slut, bitch, whore, and worse. Meanwhile, her case has become an international cause célèbre when it is made the subject of a popular radio program. As her family begins to break apart, Emma becomes ever more self-hating and self-blaming. The words my fault become a mantra for her. But is it her fault? Emma seems never to consider that question, insisting to herself, instead, that she has ruined the boys' lives. As her own life becomes increasingly bleak, the novel veers dangerously close to melodrama. Nevertheless, it is a powerful cautionary tale that will appeal to older teens as well as to adult readers.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
O'Neill (Only Ever Yours) again examines the ways in which society devalues the bodies and lives of girls, this time taking on the subject of sexual assault. Emma O'Donovan, 18, has always been praised for her beauty, and she walks a line between cruelty and kindness to bend everyone to her whims. One night Emma parties too hard, drinking and taking drugs until she passes out. The next day she learns that she was the victim of a Steubenville-like gang rape, and the boys involved have plastered horrific and explicit photos of the assault online. Soon everyone in Emma's tightknit Irish community has taken sides-mostly against her-and as a trial nears and the world watches, even Emma's family abandons her. O'Neill's treatment of how communities mishandle sexual assault and victimize its victims is unforgiving, and readers will despair to see Emma helpless in the face of injustice. It's a brutal, hard-to-forget portrait of human cruelty that makes disturbingly clear the way women and girls internalize sexist societal attitudes and unwarranted guilt. Ages 12-up. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Emma O'Donovan is an 18-year-old living in a small Irish town. She's beautiful but all too aware of it and loves but is in constant competition with her best friends. But when she is raped by four popular "good" guys at a party, Emma becomes an object of rumor, hatred, and resistance. O'Neill's writing is ruthless in its exploration of rape culture but full of subtlety and understanding. A complex and essential look at how society so often treats and views survivors of rape. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
