It’s heavy, but brilliant.

It’s difficult to rate a book that is about another humans suffering.
I don’t know what to say except everyone should read this.
I bought it with a credit on here AND I bought a hard cover for my sons to read. It’s that important.

5 people found this helpful

Couldn't stop listening

Like many others, I was familiar with the case. I heard about it on the news, I outraged on facebook and it's been brought up many times in conversations and memes all over the internet over the years. To hear it in a whole new way, through Chanel, made it so much more real, so much more heartbreaking and infuriating but also, hopeful. Chanel's voice and words made me feel as though I was with her. Her voice is calming and comforting, especially giving the subject matter - but also devastating in certain parts.

2 people found this helpful

READ THIS

This is the most important book I’ve ever read.
Her writing is raw and eloquent. I wept and I raged. I felt both hopeless and hopeful, discouraged yet empowered. Chanel thank you for sharing your story.

2 people found this helpful

Hard to review personal tragedy

I imagine this book would be really helpful for a person or the family of a person who has been through a sexual assault. I will admit, I took away from this book a new understanding of the internal workings of a victim. Unfortunately, while the author is trying to convey her feelings she repeats herself constantly, over and over and over and over and over, well, you get it. This is a long and tedious read and the narrator does not have a voice that can capture you and hold on.

1 person found this helpful

Bravo!

Such a beautiful tribute to yourself and your experience. No longer a victim !!
I applaud you!

1 person found this helpful

thank you Chanel, you spoke for so many of us

this should be required reading in high schools every where and should be accompanied by a mandatory full semester class on gender equality, prejudice, and understanding what gender and race entitlement is.

1 person found this helpful

I loved it!

Why can't some folks just apologize for their transgressions it would be healing for all!! Chanel you write so elequently. Thank you for sharing your incredible story. Your are strong and you are an incredible example.

1 person found this helpful

Powerful, honest, vulnerable

What a powerfully written book. Chanel does an impeccable job at opening our eyes and our hearts. At allowing us to stand with her in her pain and trauma. Every human being should read and feel her words. Thank you for sharing your truth!

An exceptional, inspiring work of art

I was only moments into beginning Chanel's book and had started to craft a review for it in my mind because I knew I'd want to say something about how her words immediately struck a chord with me and, throughout the entire listening of her audiobook, continued to cement her story and her telling of it as the best written, most powerful story I've read. Ever. And I have a LONG list of favourite books of powerful stories.

It goes without saying that she and her family endured a monumental circumstance, and undoubtedly continue to grapple with it. So to say this book is now my favourite is hard to do because of the raw, horrible root of the story, but it's due to the bravery and method of telling the story that puts this at the top of my "Awe-Inspiring Books" list.

Chanel is an incredible writer. It's in her word choice, her metaphors, her use of punctuation. All those things are outside of the profound realities of her story. They stand on their own as evidence and would and will be incredible no matter the content of her storytelling. I spent the whole duration of her story bookmarking passages that sat with me, I bookmarked A LOT. Passages and metaphors like:

"To watch the sun spill its yoke over the hills" and

"A guy with tiny tally marks of hair on his upper lip let us in" and

"I am not sure exactly what healing is or looks like, what form it comes in or what it should feel like. I do know that when I was four I could not lift a gallon of milk, could not believe how heavy it was, that white, sloshing boulder. I'd pull up a wooden chair to stand over the counter, pouring the milk with shaking arms, wetting the cereal, spilling. Looking back, I don't remember the day I lifted it with ease, all I know is that now I do it without thinking, can do it one handed, on the phone, in a rush. I believe the same rules apply, that one day, I'll be able to tell this story without it shaking my foundation. Each time will not require an entire production, a spilling, a sweating forehead, a mess to clean up, sopping paper towels, it will just be a part of my life, every day lighter to lift."

Her love-saturated words about her sister and her mom and her dad and her boyfriend and her grandparents and her friends and other loved ones are truly heart warming and I connected with them strongly. I deeply appreciated her links between other incidents of violence against women, other stories in the news, other life circumstances that she pulled seamlessly into the immediate story of overcoming her assault and elaborated on them with wisdom and grace.

She draws conclusions on and puts words to things like catcalling and the precarious, double-standard that women have to consciously and subconsciously adhere to to strive for personal safety. I went over those sections again and again, finding solace in her simple comparisons, her calling-out of the cat callers, the audacity that some men have to lay claim to our space, our safety, our confidence, our bodies, our routines, our joy. I think I'd been looking for words like hers for a long time and when I was listening to her read her book, I felt enraged, I felt sorrow, I felt comforted by this terrible, common link between us, between so many women.

Chanel, I'm not sure if you still read comments, but in case you do I want to say thank you.

Thank you for choosing to stand in the sunlight. For sharing your story, for using it to lift up and advocate for women and survivors. You did not have to, but you did. You advocated when I'm sure you had little, if any, energy to spare. Your words have been a balm to me, helping heal wounds I thought I'd moved past. I finished your book and opened a Word document to put to digital paper my own memories, continuing an attempt at writing I'd started years ago after my own experience with assault. Thank you for taking the time to make coherent phrases about the power of women, and the injustice of society, because it helped frame those things in my mind too, what had been half-baked, subconscious feelings of rage, passion and an inability to fully form my raw thoughts into solid points.

I want the men in my life to read this story so that perhaps they can grasp what it's often like to be a woman. I want the women in my life to read this so that they can be buoyed upwards like I was with your constant reminders that it doesn't matter what comes at us because we are powerful, we are capable, we are eternal.

You were incredible before that night in January, and you continue to be, despite everything the universe has thrown at you.

Went in for the tea, came out a changed person

I remember seeing news about this trial on TV, and I wanted to read this mostly because I was curious to find out what the “victim’s” perspective was. I got that, and SO much more.

Not only does Chanel detail every painful memory surrounding the trial, but she digs deeper and pulls the curtain on a flawed legal system that seems pitted against victims. And slowly, you realize that it’s not just the legal system. Misogyny is everywhere: on the streets, in the media, even in the White House. You realize that it’s not about one dude being bad, it’s about the way men and women are framed, how we learn to interact with each other, whose boundaries to respect and whose to break.

Chanel’s story is both engaging and eye-opening. My only criticisms are, 1) It does get repetitive at times, and we get a lot of details about specific events or people that are not always necessary, but they do make the book feel more personal, so there’s that; 2) While I don’t think anyone but Chanel herself could have narrated this, she does not have the background of an audiobook performer (to my knowledge), and it kiiind of shows. However, hearing the emotion in her voice did make up for it.

tl;dr read this book.