Reading this book felt like rooting for the final girl in a horror movie. It's a little disjointed, but had a twist I didn't see coming.

Powerful and thought provoking, Taint is a novel which is definitely suited for older teens and is one that will also have a profound impact on adults who read it.

I'll start by saying I really appreciated this book's willingness to tackle such a heavy but important topic. It did a good job of showing the impact that rape/sexual assault can have on people, including the friends and families of survivors. The story follows Rebecca, he learns that her best friend Luke was raped, and she becomes consumed with hatred and a desire for revenge. I liked the overarching plot of the novel, and I liked that it ended with a bit of an unexpected twist.Thank you to the author

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

Not my favorite. The writing was very disjointed, especially the first third of the book. The 9/11 aspect felt random and unnecessary. The ending was very dissatisfying. Not one I'd read again.

First of all, thanks to NetGalley and Atmosphere Press for approving my request and sending me an eARC in exchange for a honest review.
You have to know English isn’t my first language, so feel free to correct me if I make some mistakes while writing this review.


TRIGGER WARNING: rape, assault.


I had high expectations from this book ... just like Rebecca, on the eve of high school graduation, who had great ideals and high life aspirations. That is until her best friend Luke tells her that after trusting one of the most popular kids in school in following at his lake house, believing he wanted to hang out and being his friend, he found himself drunk and a rape victim at Weston's hands.

It's hard for Rebecca to swallow - first it's hard to believe a guy could get raped, then it's hard to keep the secret ... but a promise is a promise. Finally, it's increasingly difficult not to want justice and revenge for Luke.

But how can Rebecca achieve these things by keeping Luke's secret safe not only from the whole world, but also from their parents and their friend Tiffany?


I appreciated the intent of this book, the intent to touch on a subject that is still unspoken and almost never confessed or addressed. As Rebecca realizes, a girl can report a rape and, if she's lucky, she can be believed and see justice. But a boy who reports a rape is afraid of the repercussions, the first of which is being pointed out as homosexual and having his trauma diminished - seeing the popular boy's version taken for granted.

I appreciated the author's intent in showing how a secret can be something that unites two people more deeply, but it can also become what separates them. Rebecca becomes so focused on her revenge that Luke gradually disappears from her life and this is not only due to the difficult period that Luke goes through, but also to the fact that Rebecca herself stops seeing him as her friend and only sees him as a victim. "Taint" - that "stain" that Rebecca so much wants to avoid seeing attached to Luke - is the representation of how even love and friendship can hurt and cause damage.

What I didn't like is the execution. Luke is only a passing shadow in the show of Rebecca's life: the novel is written in the form of a stream of consciousness that tells us about the protagonist's life and that often wanders too away from the main point of this story. The protagonists are no longer Luke and the terrible trauma that the latter is facing, but the thirst for revenge of Rebecca who fights to emerge - and which gets her to do something that I consider condemnable and with the consequences of which she will have to live for the rest of her life, demonstrating that you don't always have to do something but simply be there for the other person.

The writing often gets stuck, phrasing didn't always go smooth and makes reading difficult - il felt bumpy and not always stating the point we were promised by the blurb: the writing sometimes strays from what was meant to be the point of the book. It has an ending that I wasn't expecting at all, but that I found realistic and consistent with what little we have seen of Luke - that's because the whole novel is the Rebecca show. I understand the burden of carrying such a secret with you, but I don't understand forgetting about that friend in the meantime.

The novel also could very well have been set in the present day, as the terrible events of September 2001 are mentioned twice in passing and don't seem to have much of an effect on the lives of these Kansas kids.

Too bad - the intent was noble, the topics serious and important, so I hope the author can improve her style and next time she can offer a story with more nuances because Rebecca's stream of consciousness made me feel very detached not only from her, but everything that happens in the book in general.

I came into this book with high hopes. The blurb made this book sound like a fantastic story, but I was sorely disappointed by both the handling of the book’s topic and by Janet Kelley’s writing style.

Stream-of-consciousness writing is a difficult prose style to pull off for even the most talented writers, and Kelley isn’t at that level. The central conflict in this book could’ve been a decent vehicle for first-person POV and for stream-of-consciousness prose in another author’s hands, but in Kelley’s case it comes across as immature, rambling, and fumbling.

It doesn’t help that Kelley’s main character isn’t one that I, as a reader, found sympathetic or relatable. I found her to be narcissistic and self-serving. In the end, I found her to be irredeemable. I never identified with her and her internal conflict once.

I would rate this book lower, but I feel like trying something new deserved an extra star. Maybe, with time and practice, Kelley could work herself up to writing something that can bring her aspiring prose to her interesting plot ideas.

I’ll be totally honest I thought the plain black cover wasn’t doing this book any favours but when you think about it, it does attract your eye as its so different to other books on a shelf. The title was the thing that intrigued me, I wanted to know what/who was Tainted and how and why too.

The book basically tells the story of Luke’s rape at the hands of a couple of the “popular boys”. I thought the book would be centred on Luke’s horror and the act of rape but we only learn about the circumstances of the rape when he finally confides in his best friend Rebecca. The book then goes on to tell the story of how something awful happening to her best friend changes Rebecca. How though Luke, Rebecca and Tiffany are all friends, it is Rebecca that Luke confides his deepest, darkest secret, which she promises to keep and not repeat/tell anyone. Rebecca of course promises, what could this dark secret be? It's only when she is told she realises how hard it is going to be to keep her word. She not only wants revenge, she is determined to get it, even if she has to pretend to like the rapist and lure him into attacking her to have it.

We see how the relationship between Rebecca and Luke changes, she views him as “the victim”. Both Rebecca & Luke’s relationship with their other friend Tiffany, as neither of them loop her into the big secret. Tiffany would literally spill the “secret” to anyone and everyone. In fact, at one point in the book, Tiffany is talking about the usual high school stuff and Rebecca snaps at her telling her “Not everything is about you!” We see how Rebecca initially struggles with the fact a boy has raped her best friend, Luke. At first Rebecca thinks it is more straight forward when a boy rapes a girl. The girl can report it and hopefully the boy is punished. Luke has already decided that he isn’t going to report the rape when he tells Rebecca about it. During the incident that led to the rape, Luke had been drinking with his attacker, and had in his words “just frozen up.” He believes if he reports the rape everyone will believe he is gay, as his attacker had called him “gay” during the attack. The attacker is one of the most popular boys in school, so Luke thinks everyone would take his side against Luke and he just couldn’t cope with everyone knowing.

The book is told in a fairly chatty, kind of Bridget Jones Diary style, through the voice of Becca. It wasn’t what I expected, I thought I would be reading Luke’s voice. The book handles some seriously difficult subjects, homosexuality, rape, peer pressure, bullying etc, quite well. It also has the usual “school” themes running through it, the “in” gang, the graduation party planning etc.

My immediate thoughts upon finishing the book were that it’s a kind of sad tale really because the “secret” ends up coming between Rebecca and Luke.

Summing up, I thought the book was okay. It handled difficult subjects well but it felt a bit slow in places and just felt a little flat.

Like most books I pickup from here I had high hopes for this novel. It tackles the difficult subject of rape but from a female's perspective. Rebecca finds out her best male friend was raped and is intent on getting revenge. Although the way she goes about it is not well executed.

The way the book is written is hard to follow at times. The author notates conversations without using quotation marks.

I felt frustrated at the climax because Rebecca basically sets Weston up to frame him for rape so he can pay for what he did to Luke. I feel like this only contributes to the myth of false rape allegations. She knowingly engaged in consensual sexual contact then revealed her true intentions which caused him to act out. Would have much preferred if Luke went to the cops and Weston was prosecuted for his rape instead.

Oh dear. Well, I'm going to try and be fair with my critique of this book because 1) I didn't make it all the way through it and 2) I respect the intentions behind the book release.

I didn't love this book. I know that probably sounds unfair because I didn't make it all the way through the book but I have a strong rule that if a book isn't hooking me by 10-15% of the ay in then I will DNF it. However, I finished earlier than this with Taint. I really didn't bond well with the writing. It was over-written. I felt that Kelley didn't trust her readers to read between the lines or figure things out for themselves. Why use 20 words when the same message can be made in 10? It jarred with me and therefore I had to DNF it. However, I am impressed by the generosity of the writer and how she wanted the a portion of the sale profits were going to be donated to the Trevor Project. Janet Kelley has brilliant intentions and I'm sure her novel will find the right audience. Unfortunately, it wasn't me.

Taint by Janet Kelley is available now.

For more information regarding Janet Kelley (@hutchkelley5) please visit www.writenowjanetkelley.com.

For more information regarding Atmosphere Press (@atmospherepress) please visit www.atmospherepress.com.

I'll start by saying I really appreciated this book's willingness to tackle such a heavy but important topic. It did a good job of showing the impact that rape/sexual assault can have on people, including the friends and families of survivors. The story follows Rebecca, he learns that her best friend Luke was raped, and she becomes consumed with hatred and a desire for revenge. I liked the overarching plot of the novel, and I liked that it ended with a bit of an unexpected twist.

While I liked the general plot, I wasn't really a fan of the execution, which made it hard for me to get through the book. The author has a writing style that may just not fit with me, but despite the heavy topic the story just felt very detached. At times it felt a little bit stream of consciousness, but it read a lot more like Rebecca was just blankly narrating her story at me rather than feeling like I was being pulled into the story and experiencing it with her. There's a lot more of the narrator telling me what people said than actual dialogue tags showing me. That might be the main reason why I just didn't care much about Rebecca as a character, and I wasn't invested. This may just be a style thing and some people may be fine with that style of reading, but for me it made the story hard to get through and I found myself skimming across several pages at a time. I think it's also important to note that the book does heavily talk about and describe rape (sometimes in a way that felt a little too blunt for me), as well as having several characters use slurs that some may find offensive, which may make it difficult for some readers to read.

Overall I'd rate this somewhere around 2.5 to 3. Not really for me but definitely an important topic that it's good to see someone writing about.

I enjoyed Taint.
It kept me reading till the very end as I really wanted to know what was going to happen.
I also think the book dealt with trauma really well and I haven't read a book before dealing with this specific topic before.
The only reason I gave this book a lower rating is because I really didn't like the main character.
I really loved the twist at the end though!
Thank you netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn’t put this down. It covers an incredibly sensitive topic in a way which shines a light on the impact which society’s perceptions and responses to rape have on how survivors perceive themselves and the crime. More than that, this book is a complex analysis of friendship and of love in all its different guises. It will test your views of justice and what is right while making you reflect on what it is like to be a young person coming to terms with trauma.

Thanks to the publisher for providing an eARC of Taint in exchange for an honest review.

First off, Janet Kelley is clearly trying to tackle an important topic that means a lot to her here and I applaud her intent, but I don't think her execution pulls it off here. Especially with heavier topics, its vital to have them supported by a strong narrative and narrator but the narrative voice here felt consistently stilted and the character speak felt forced and unbelievable which made it extremely difficult to connect to a story where it's vital to connect.

First of all huge kudos to Ms. Kelley for tackling such a heavy topic. I think that bringing awareness to the commonality of men/boys being raped is so important. I liked this book overall but some of the characters just fell flat for me. I did not anticipate the ending which was a great twist.

Taint is unlike any novel I have read. It is very skillfully written and tells the story of a female best friend dealing with the aftermath of her male friend's rape and the lengths she goes to - to obtain 'justice.'

Rebecca is a high school student and along with her best friend Luke, they are preparing to move onto their next chapter - college - when Luke calls Rebecca, telling her that he has been raped by one of the popular boys - who happens to be the headmaster's son.
Rebecca is academically gifted, at the top of her class, but begins to spiral in her ever-consuming quest for justice. However, Luke doesn't quite see it this way.
The novel doesn't end in the way I expected which was surprising and it had a clever twist.

Well written - I look forward to reading more of Kelley's work.