Rage: A Love Story

This book is about a lesbian girl who falls for this deeply troubled and dangerous girl in her school. You can't let the pretty pink book and the words "love story" deceive you though. This book is all about abusive relationships and giving yourself up for the sake of a relationship. Every one in the book plays dual roles as victims and abusers. Johanna abuses Novak, her best friend. Reeve abuses Johanna. Robbie is abused by Reeve and their family. Reeve is also abused by her family. This novel is important for gay and straight people alike to read. It sheds a new light on the possible turmoil of abuse and abusive relationships. It's definitely recommended for anyone who is interested in reading about abusive teen relationships.

Reviewed by Sally Kruger aka "Readingjunky" for TeensReadToo.com

Don't let the hot pink cover and the label A Love Story deceive you. RAGE is Julie Anne Peters's most powerful book yet. The focus is on an abusive dating relationship and the toll it takes on victim and villain alike.

Two girls with their own personal dysfunctional family issues are drawn together by mutual feelings of love and lust.

Johanna has survived the death of both her parents and feels abandoned by her sister, whose choice was to remain at college when Johanna needed her most.

Reeve and her twin brother, Robbie, live with daily abuse from a drug addicted mother and her controlling boyfriend. She only knows one way to express her feelings, and Johanna becomes the show more recipient of a twisted kind of love.

Ever since Johanna laid eyes on Reeve, she has had fantasies about how things could be between them. It doesn't matter that Reeve practices a sort of tough love with everyone she meets. Reeve punching her brother and giving Johanna bruising kisses is just part of loving someone like her. Johanna knows Reeve suffers at home and is sure that loving her unconditionally is a way to protect her and fix whatever is wrong.

Despite warnings from her sister, her friend, and Reeve's old flames, Johanna continues the relationship even as she loses important pieces of her own life. As long as Reeve returns after each incident, Johanna believes that love will hold the answers.

Julie Anne Peters has created a relationship that will leave readers with mixed emotions. While trying to understand the power of love, they will be shaking their heads at the same time they are shaking their fists at the actions of characters on both sides of this tumultuous relationship.

RAGE provides an inside look at what might drive us to give up parts of ourselves for the sake of love. show less

While this book is advertised on barnesandnoble.com as a book for 12yrs and up, after reading it and checking out some reviews (School of Library Journal) I would have to say this book is definitely more suited for the high school age group. This romance novel features a lesbian senior in high school who finds her first love. Johana is a bright, aspiring 12th grader who has lost her father to Parkinson's and her mother in the last year, she lives in the apartment behind the main house now occupied by her sister and brother-in-law. With much freedom, Johana is surprisingly responsible given her being without parents, yet pushes the limits by missing car insurance payments and allowing her best friend, Novak, and Novak's boyfriend use her show more apartment to get high and have sex. Johana's relationship with Reeve is complex. Reeve comes from an abusive home, has a drug addicted mother and an autistic brother, Robbie. Reeve finally takes notice of Johana after Johana is assigned to tutor Robbie so he can complete his senior project and graduate from high school. At first Johana is terrified of Robbie, but as she gets to know him during tutoring sessions, and while spending time with him and Reeve, Johana gains an understanding of Robbie and the complex issues he is dealing with. Johana is also caught up in trying to protect her love interest from the abuse she faces at home. The author weaves in "Joyland" fantasies Johana has with Reeve and continues them to the end of the book. Peters incorporates realistic problems teens deal with every day: death of a parent, stormy sibling relationships, friendships that fail when love interests take priority, abuse, and disability and adds it to the emotional experience of "coming out". This love story is more appropriate for the high school reader and would be enjoyed by the hetero and homosexual YA readers. show less

Johanna is in love with Reeve from afar and has been since she first saw her. But Reeve has never taken notice. Reeve hangs with the LBD (LesBo Dykes) crowd and Johanna is more of a loner, hanging mostly with Novak who also uses Johanna’s apartment as a rendezvous with her boyfriend. A request by a teacher that Johanna help Robbie with his senior essay, sets the stage for Johanna and Reeve to meet. Robbie is Johanna’s brother.

Johanna’s wish is finally granted and before you know it, Reeve and Johanna are girlfriends, or are they really? Do either of them really know what love is? Johanna drives by Reeve’s house one day only to get a view of what Reeve’s life is really like. She encounters Reeve’s uncle Anthony dragging her show more addict mother out of the car by her hair, a stream of foul language coming out of his mouth. As the days pass, Reeve’s story of abuse by both her uncle and her father unfolds and the by products of that become all too evident: Reeve has an abusive streak of her own.

Johanna’s history: Her father died of Parkinson’s disease and her mother of cancer. She took care of her mother during those last months, her sister Tessa being away at college. Now Tessa is back home with her husband Martin. Once close, Tessa and Johanna rarely speak, and certainly not about important things. As a result, Johanna is going through this ‘love affair’ on her own, having abandoned Novak because of Reeve’s jealous streak.

Abusive families breed abusive children. Isolated children seek love, in whatever form it comes. The combination of the two can be horrendous, as in the case of Johanna. She will take the physical abuse, ‘knowing’ that Reeve really loves her and doesn’t mean to hurt her. She is willing to lose so much for the sake of love…including her self respect.

Peters’ writing in Rage: A Love Story, true to form, has produced an engrossing look at Johanna’s dreams and her reality. Johanna and Reeve and Novak are real characters that readers will relate to, care about, sympathize with, and like or dislike intensely. As with many books on this topic, readers will want to figuratively bang Johanna’s head against the wall (Reeve does it literally) and tell her to wake up and smell the roses. While the conclusion is bittersweet, it is a viable ending that readers will accept. Fans of Julie Anne Peters will devour Rage and non-fans will become fans after reading the book.

For other versions of this story, read Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn or Dreamland by Sarah Dessen. show less

The first half was a little tiresome and hard to get into — the characters and storyline started fleshing out by the second half. Although the discussion of abuse in lesbian relationships is an important one, and I appreciated Julie Anne Peters's attempt to show how the abuser in this situation was a complex character with her own history of abuse, but her portrayal did not feel too realistic. The extent of abuse in Reeve's family was so extreme — culminating in her stepfather murdering her mother and brother — it was as if to say that anything less wouldn't constitute an abusive home, and the absolute lack of anger in Johanna, in response to Reeve abusing her, was hard to believe. The fact she would try to excuse the violence and show more manipulation and focus on how much she loved her, fine, but that she would never ever even blink, shout, cry? Not too realistic. It was also strange to me how quickly Reeve fell in "love" with a girl she had never talked to. I was also bothered by Johanna's best friend, Novak, who consistently referred to her as Lesbo, sexually harassed her, and was an all-around jerk to her, being presented as the "good friend" alternative to Reeve. show less

I adore Julie Anne Peters and I am thankful that she writes the books she does. When I was in high school the GLBT books were few and far between, and most of them just dealt with coming out. Peters goes beyond the coming out process (which is vital, of course) and tackles topics such as having a brother who is transgendered (Luna), being kicked out of your home because you're a lesbian (Keeping You a Secret), and intimate partner abuse (Rage). Rage gives a very open and honest look into Johanna's psyche as she rationalizes the actions of her abusive girlfriend.
At the end of the book there is a list of resources for victims of violence, both general and LGBT-specific.

I kind of hated this book. On the positive side, it's queer and the writing style isn't bad.

But... if a main character is wrong, they need to figure it out for themselves. Other characters can't tell them that they're wrong for half the book and then turn out to be right. I think this is a common problem when old people try to try to write books for young people, at least when there's an intentional message and it's not just an adventure story. The stuff I've read by Sarah Dessen annoys the heck out of me for the same reason.