The Mockingbirds, by Daisy Whitney

Today is Bookanista day! Bookanista day makes me happy. And today, I’d like to talk about Daisy Whitney’s THE MOCKINGBIRDS. Here’s what it’s about:

Some schools have honor codes.

Others have handbooks.

Themis Academy has the Mockingbirds.

Themis Academy is a quiet boarding school with an exceptional student body that the administration trusts to always behave the honorable way--the Themis Way. So when Alex is date raped during her junior year, she has two options: stay silent and hope someone helps her, or enlist the Mockingbirds--a secret society of students dedicated to righting the wrongs of their fellow peers.

In this honest, page-turning account of a teen girl's struggle to stand up for herself, debut author Daisy Whitney reminds readers that if you love something or someone--especially yourself--you fight for it.

I’m usually pretty silly about…well, everything. I hope you aren’t disappointed, because today, I’m going to be serious.

When I was in high school, I was date raped, so this book really hit home for me. So much of what Alex goes through in THE MOCKINGBIRDS is familiar. Just like her, I tried to convince myself that I’d wanted it, tried to remake it in my mind as something consensual. I remember afterwards, how it felt like nothing would ever be the same. Like I was unfixable.

But if I was going to write a sequel to this lovely, hopeful book, I’d write about how time passes. How one day you’ve got your hands full trying to make it to graduation without giving up and swallowing the pills you’ve got stashed secretly in your pocket, and then one day you turn around and realize that you’re HAPPY. You’re no longer focused on just surviving; now your job is to be funny and to tell tall tales about ridiculous circumstances and about being brave despite impossible odds. You realize that’s been your dream all along. You realize that somewhere along the way, you dared to start dreaming again. You realize you deserve those big, impossible dreams. You realize they aren’t so impossible after all.

You wish that someone had had the guts to write this book when you were seventeen. You’re glad Daisy Whitney had the guts to write it now. You wish you could skywrite the title above every major city so that some girl somewhere with pills in her pocket could read it and decide to flush them, because if there’s a message to this book, it’s that there is life after date rape or whatever your label may be. I think this message works just as well for THAT guy who is gay, or THAT girl who is poor, and so on. Like Alex, you can choose not to be defined by whatever your THAT is and go on living your life. In my case, it’s one hell of an awesome life.

Daisy Whitney, you rock more than sparkly vampires.

See? I can’t stop cracking jokes even when I try. But damn it, I’ve EARNED that. And it just goes to show that what THE MOCKINGBIRDS says is true. I’m not defined by date rape. I may, however, be defined by my irrepressible sense of humor. And I’m damned proud to be THAT girl.

So, on that note, please go check out a little more Bookanista love!

• Elana Johnson thinks Delirium is dope
  
• LiLa Roecker falls for Between Shades of Grey
  
• Christine Fonseca soars for Across the Universe
  
• Shannon is hosting an epic Invasion giveaway
  
• Shelli Johannes Wells is giving some Liar Society lovin'
  
• Myra McEntire is spreading some cover love for Siren and Undercurrent
  
• Beth Revis is thanking her fellow Bookanistas
  
• Carolina Valdez Miller swoons for Scrawl
  
• Megan Miranda falls for Dark Goddess
  
• Bethany Wiggins is Entice(d)
  
• Jen Hayley and Shana Silver ignite for Angelfire
  
• Matt Blackstone convinces us that Some Day This Pain Will Be Useful to You