This book started out very promisingly. A teenage girl, Sammy, goes missing from a lakeside community in Florida. She and her friend Mia are the object of an admiration and fascination bordering on the obsessive for a group of slightly younger girls, who watch them and follow them around. The younger girls form a collective narrator which functions as a Greek chorus, dropping hints of having insider knowledge about her whereabouts whilst reporting events in an idiosyncratic and enigmatic manner.

The narrative takes the form of a series of obscure vignettes giving a snapshot of life in this dysfunctional, bored little community. The missing girl is the local preacher's daughter; her friend Mia the daughter of a single mother who brokers young talent - and more - for a sleazy talent scout. The chorus girls' mothers live lives of quiet desperation masked by drinking and socialising at communal barbecues, calling their collective daughters 'brutes' when they are casually cruel in the way of young teen girls. The nearby lake is black, uninviting, possibly heavily polluted, with rumours of housing a mysterious monstrous creature that are used to scare small children away from the water's edge.

This very intriguing start unfortunately doesn't really develop into anything other than more of the same. With a premise that is fundamentally one of a missing person mystery, there came a point where I wanted to feel that we were moving towards a conclusion, and this doesn't really come. What we do get is perfunctory, and I felt that too many questions were left unanswered. Not all stories need a neat beginning, middle and end, true, but this just became irritating - little snippets that very much failed to add up to either a coherent whole, or gaps that made me think. Lots of ideas could have been developed but were not - the transgender boy in the group of girls, the monster in the lake, the arson-prone brother of the missing girl's boyfriend, the hints of a systematic teen procurement system for the sleazy talent scout (this one did at least go somewhere), and of course the main mystery of Sammy's disappearance. The girls, the brutes of the title, certainly dispel any thoughts of childhood innocence, but they reminded me far too much of the cliques who tormented me when I was a bit of an outsider at that age. Maybe that is why this book left me cold? But ultimately, I think this is a new author who needs to understand that there is more to a successful novel than an intriguing style.

A book that will hook you, draw you in and then leave you wondering what the hell just happened! Strange girls in a small, strange town. A dreamy read.

Dizz Tate’s debut novel is an intense, lyrical reinvention of a plot that’s a staple of American crime fiction, the missing girl in a small town. Tate moves between past and present: in the past a cabal of 13-year-olds operate as one, telling their stories as a chorus’ while in the present they are separate, world-weary, individual. The group are united in their apparent obsession with the disappearance of Sammy, the local preacher’s daughter, something that continues to haunt them as adults.

Tate is partly inspired by a favourite book <i>The Virgin Suicides</i> but she shifts perspectives so the girls in her novel take control of narrating, while the choice of collective voice is taken from a technique used by Mariana Enriquez. Tate’s chosen setting, Lands Fall, Florida, seems as significant as character here. It’s a blighted place, filled with the stench of the nearby fertiliser factory, it's a site of falsity, outward displays of glitz or glamour masking poverty and decay. It also links Tate’s vision of teenage angst, longing and rebellion with something more fundamental in American society, a country that holds out a promise of a bright future that few are likely to possess, and one in which those with power are free to exploit the weak and innocent.

Tate’s main themes which centre on issues around gender, misogyny and child abuse reminded me of recent work by writers like Emma Cline and Sarah Manguso’s <i>Very Cold People</i>, Tate’s overall approach is less conventional, and there are some marvellous observational passages and imagery, but at the same time I felt she was covering well-trodden ground. So although this is a very promising first novel, and there was a lot I admired, it never quite had the impact I was hoping for.

Rating: 3/3.5

Marketed as The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project, this was an instant pick-up for me. Brutes follows a gang of thirteen-year-old girls as they obsess over Sammy, the local preacher’s daughter. But when Sammy goes missing, the girls discover things about their town that will haunt them forever.

Brutes starts out very strong. Dizz Tate builds a vivid atmosphere and explores girlhood in a captivating way. Its comparison to The Virgin Suicides is an accurate one, but it also reminded me of Sharp Objects. These two titles are beloved by me.

As the story progresses I did feel the story lost some comprehensiveness. Flitting between different POVs, different points in time & different locations, every time I picked Brutes up, I felt like I was reading a different story.

“Brutes” is a difficult book to describe. It tells the story of a group of 13 year old girls who obsess over their slightly older neighbour, Sammy. When Sammy suddenly goes missing, the whole neighbourhood start searching for her. But what do the girls know? And how will this event shape their future lives?

I feel like the plot is the weaker part of this book. The observations of what it is like to be a 13 year old girl and what it’s like to have a group of friends at that age are the strengths. Some of the descriptions are so accurate and relevant that they really took me by surprise in a good way. I also liked the way that the bulk of the story wasn’t told from one perspective but by them as a group with only occasional glimpses into their individual future lives.

However, ultimately, I found some of the plot confusing, particularly in the latter part of the book, and I found the end disappointing too. It’s not a long read so I would say it’s worth reading for some of the insights and I admire the author for how they have written parts of this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book.

An unusual book that uses a collective 'we' narrative and pits that against a singular narrative in various sections. The girl gang that see themselves as a groups identity and then individual sections that see former gang members elaborating on their earlier lack of consciousness.

The literary devices are cleverly used and do give a perspective of what it's like to be part of a close gang and then the fallout when you no longer have that gang consciousness to rely on, but while this helped explain it also got in the way of understanding.

A group of preteens have a feverish summer where they see things that are not fully understood by themselves or by the reader, and their actions lead to consequences that follow them individually and collectively into their adult lives.

Overall the book is a feverish read and I am still not clear what really happens for most of the plot, and ultimately the style does get in the way of any substance.

Thank you to NetGalley, Faber publishing house and the author for an eARC.

It was a DNF for me, since I have no interest in spending time forcing myself to read books I don't like, when there are so many other books I want to read. The 70 pages I read took me almost 10 days, because the writing is complicated, there's a lot of characters and it's hard to remember who is who. It felt so condensed and repetitive, the paragraphs which actually described happening were so confusing to me.

I understand the appeal and the charm of this type of books. I'm usually very intrigued by it, but this execution was not for me. A lot of people are comparing it to The Virgin Suicides, which I have yet to read, so my association was Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn, which is one of my favorite books, and sadly, Brutes got nowhere near it.

I saw this book recommended by a fellow writer and immediately requested it. I wasn’t disappointed. Written from a unique perspective this unsettling story of a missing girl is both beautifully written and satisfying. Loved the mystery combined with the lyrical writing.

Dizz Tate's Brutes is a story punctuated by broken glass, 'a thousand flecks of shrieking glitter.' like droplets of lake water caught in the halogen Florida sunlight. And the whole story is somewhat of a kaleidoscope of views, those of a constellation of friends fighting boredom in the shadow of a towering white wall. The wall separates them from the angelic life of Sammy, the preacher's daughter. Sammy can vault from a trampoline onto the top of the wall and shimmy down a ladder into the arms of any boy on the derelict lot where the girls hang out. The wall is like a screen, and the book is cinematic in its prose and ambition, with fast cuts from one view to another. The people and places are veneers, like the stage set of a western frontier town populated with extras on a day rate. The girls gather, smoking cigarettes filched from their mums, on the steps of just such an illusion, the unfinished show home of an abandoned estate. On the outside, it's a suburban dream. Behind the façade, it's a squalid place for local kids to fuck. The roof ripped off in a storm exposes how paper thin it all is. Things fall apart pretty quickly. One minute, you're the coolest girl in town, but as soon as you take off your sunglasses, the sweaty light of Falls Landing will judge you and find you wanting.
The other feature of the place is the lake, as black as the wall is white. The lake swallows anyone who goes near. It harbours something ominous, perhaps a monster or just an inky bubble of foul air rising from the depths but never breaking the surface. The novel toys with what aspect of adolescent anxiety the lake represents, perhaps just the darkness of adulthood, to be loved while being humiliated.
And, as with all smalltown stories, the dream is to get a ticket out, only you can't get away; the monster in the lake follows you wherever you end up.
The novel's style reminded me of Don DeLillo's 'White Noise,' the impending mystery on the horizon is ever ominous but never materialises. Tate's writing is like her character's dress code, 'We want to look our best but we don't want anyone to notice our efforts. We want to look lazy and gorgeous and innocent.' There is more than one way to achieve that look, and the narrative has many factettes leaving the reader plenty of space to imagine and remember their own dark lakes.

Beautifully written and a great concept - just wasn’t for me I’m afraid. I found it hard going in places trying to piece together all the different characters.

I was really looking forward to reading this book after reading the blurb and some of the reviews but I walked away from it very disappointed and I'll explain why.

The book using a brave and interesting narrative viewpoint, a group of six friends writing mostly as the collective 'we.' However, as novel and adventurous as this is as an approach, the result is actually to stop the reader connecting and sympathising with the characters, which is the death knell for any book, particularly here where none of the characters are particularly likeable. The book switches between two timelines, then and now, but the exploration of the individuals in the now fails to save it from this perspective, unfortunately.

The author writes beautiful, lyrical prose, as promised, and her evocation of the dirty, unpleasant side of Florida against the shiny, colourful theme park facade is brilliantly done. Sadly, the book is so lost in the beautiful writing and the clever metaphors and allegories that it literally loses the plot. By the end of the book, I had no idea what was supposed to have happened, what effect it should have had on me or the characters or what the author was trying to tell me. The message was so subtle that it vanished under its own cleverness and I was left confused, frustrated and ultimately disappointed.

I think Dizz Tate is talented and has the potential to write something really great. This book just didn't work for me, I'm afraid, so I have not put this review up on the blog.

The writing was lovely, the florida humidity came right off the page, and i liked the clique-y and borderline obsessive point of view of we, we, we that most preteens go through.

The characterization of Sammy left something to be desired and could have been expanded on, i am lost on why this group of girls decided to obsess over a random schoolmate who was described as a 'loser'. Overall the novel could have benefitted from being longer.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC!

This was a strange, unsettling read - with an interesting use of both the collective & singular narrative voice. I found the contrast between the girls in adulthood and their mothers to be the most interesting & thought-provoking aspect.

Thanks for letting me read.

Okay girlies!!

Brutes immediately had me sucked in. The switching of timelines and personal pronouns were particularly well used in creating an air of uncertainty, as well as a feeling of isolated community that is so essential to what is to be a teenage girl. I was never entirely sure of what was happening, what anyone knew, but I was entirely sure of what it felt like to live in the moment they were living in. The atmosphere created by Dizz Tate was humid and unflinching.

It definitely brought to mind The Virgin Suicides as a comparison, but I loved to read a novel where the girls are the watchers, rather than the watched.

Beautiful, dream-like prose captures the strange obsessions and cruelty of young girls. Tate creates an unnerving, close atmosphere and I loved the “we” group narration and snapshots of their individual futures. I really enjoyed this but my only wish was the story and resolution was a little less opaque. It left me wanting more resolution but I loved Dizz Tate’s writing so will be seeking out her work in future.

Original and twisty comibg of age tale that keeps the reader slightly uncomfortable throughout. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC

One of those books where I’m not entirely sure what just happened, but god I loved it anyway. Tate has an incredible writing style, I found her flitting between second person and individual character POVs in the future compelling and grounding in a story that often feels like a hot Floridian fever dream. There’s a lot of ambiguity in this novel, it leaves space for your imagination to fill in the horrific gaps.

Unfortunately this book wasn't for me. The first few pages are difficult to get into and once you get passed the first few chapters the plot begins to develop a little bit faster. The girls in this book aren't very nice and the characters aren't likeable. The narration of the book is a little hard to get through at times and makes it slightly hard to follow. In saying that Tate is a talented writer and this is a good first time novel

This cover and title got me intrigued… and I enjoyed this!

Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publishers for letting me read this book in exchange for my review.

Brutes by Dizz Tate

A small Florida town undergoing redevelopment is the backdrop of this tale. It looks like a place in flux. The lives of awkward adolescents with their quirky parents is upended when one of the girls goes missing. A mystery, but also an insight into the tension between growing up and being grown up;how our early life experiences can shape our future.