Silver
Hit me.
Kick me.
Hurt me.
Hate me.
There’s nothing that the students of Raleigh High can do to Silver Parisi anymore. Over the past year, she’s had to endure more pain and suffering than most people are asked to bear in their lifetimes. She’s a pariah, an outcast, a ghost. She’s also never been one to take shit lying down, though…despite what half the football team might say.
With only one hundred and sixty-eight days left of the school year, it won’t be long until graduation, and Silver’s planning on skipping town and leaving Raleigh firmly in her rearview mirror…
Until he comes along…
Alex
Orphan.
Degenerate.
Reprobate.
Deviant.
Alex Moretti’s earned most of his labels, and he’s not shamed of a single one of them. He’ll earn far worse before he’s finished with his new found ‘friends’ at Raleigh High. Having spent years being ground down under the boot heel of society, it’s time for a little payback. And if exacting a revenge upon the heads of the Raleigh elite means he can also help the beautiful girl who hovers in the shadows, then that’s all for the better.
Oil and water. Fire and ice. The differences between Silver and Alex are broader than any chasm. To reach one another, they must take a leap of faith and fall into the divide.
And falling?
Nothing good ever came from falling.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2GPxeyR
My Review
I knew heading into Silver and Alex’s story that this wasn’t going to be a YA read, not even close; I also quickly realized that even though the characters are 17 year old high school seniors, the events and issues that unfold as The Rebel of Raleigh High continues are destructive, deviant, and beyond devastating, illustrating the darker sides of people’s personalities and what happens when money and social status matter more than the truth.
The beginning of the book focuses on the heroine and the hero separately as they adjust to and endure their new normal in the halls of Raleigh High, and while they handle things differently due to the situation that placed them in their current position, neither of them wants to deal with the elite Raleigh Royalty because all they are, are a bunch of followers who blindly trail behind a crew who doesn’t deserve the respect or honor that their cronies dote on them.
Silver Parisi may have been one of the Queen Bs of Raleigh, but for the past 9 months, as the school’s pariah, she has had to endure continual mistreatment, nasty remarks, and sneering glares from those who she once called friends, simply because she refused to remain quiet when her choices were taken from her and a group of guys played a sick and twisted game with her body and her mind.
I truly don’t know how Silver kept it together day in and day out with the amount of abuse that was doled out. Regardless of how other people viewed her, she refused to cower…she refused to break, even though she would have had every right to given what she endured. I do wish that there would have been further insight into how she handled what happened to her all on her own without succumbing to the darkness…to the fractures of her heart with all of the loss…to the loneliness she felt when everyone ditched her. Because even though Silver seems to just deal with everything, there had to be breaking points…there had to be times where the risk of being swallowed up whole would have overwhelmed her.
I don’t know if I’ve ever been introduced to a hero in quite the way Callie Hart unveils Alex Moretti to her readers. But as unusual and off-putting as it seemed, on some level, I understood his actions. He’s a bit of a loose cannon for much of the story, which makes sense given his backstory and all that he has to endure by other people’s words and actions. Alex is definitely a lot like Silver, and the fact that they challenge each other, make one another feel alive, and give the other person something to fight for is a testament to how strong they are.
I love that Alex saw through the fake personalities of the Raleigh Elite and went about proving just how much he didn’t care for their antics and showboating. He’s as fierce and uncaring as Silver is, so it’s easy to see why they’re intrigued by each other. As much as Silver tried to stay away from Alex, it wasn’t possible because on some level, she knew she needed him and he needed her to keep their shoulders straight…to keep their heads up…to keep enduring, which is exactly what they do because they’re no longer fighting their fight alone.
The ending events of the book seemed to come out of nowhere, so much so that I actually went back into the earlier chapters to see if there were clues and inferences made that would indicate that even more chaos was headed their way. I actually didn’t find too many, which the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that there shouldn’t be because situations like the one these students find themselves in at the end of the story don’t occur in a rational way, so keeping things unexpected fits.
If I remember correctly, Callie Hart plans to bring readers back to Raleigh High and provide us with more of Silver and Alex’s story, which I’m eager to read because there are a lot of loose ends at the end of book, and I need a bit more closer on a few of conflicts that are still open ended. And, I also wouldn’t mind Alex delving out some payback in what I would suspect would be ingenious ways.
4.5 Poison Apples
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