Title/Author: Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley
Publication Date/Publisher: September 9, 2014/Harper Teen
Series: Not currently
Source and Format: I received this book for free from the publisher via Edelweiss. This in no way affected my opinion of the book, or the content of my review.
Rating: 4 stars
From Goodreads:
Sam McKenna’s never turned down a dare. And she’s not going to start with the last one her brother gave her before he died.
So Sam joins the first-ever class of girls at the prestigious Denmark Military Academy. She’s expecting push-ups and long runs, rope climbing and mud-crawling. As a military brat, she can handle an obstacle course just as well as the boys. She’s even expecting the hostility she gets from some of the cadets who don’t think girls belong there. What she’s not expecting is her fiery attraction to her drill sergeant. But dating is strictly forbidden and Sam won’t risk her future, or the dare, on something so petty…no matter how much she wants him.
As Sam struggles to prove herself, she discovers that some of the boys don’t just want her gone—they will stop at nothing to drive her out. When their petty threats turn to brutal hazing, bleeding into every corner of her life, she realizes they are not acting alone. A decades-old secret society is alive and active… and determined to force her out.
At any cost.
Now time’s running short. Sam must decide who she can trust…and choosing the wrong person could have deadly consequences.
Rites of Passage is super hard for me to review and super hard to pinpoint why I liked it so much – especially since all my thought about it are kind of complain-y. Like…everything I like about it also has a negative.
Some examples:
FINALLY a girl that is strong for real and actually does some weight lifting (although extremely briefly)…and she does it all wrong. Like, I’m so glad you impressed the guys with your knowledge of the jargon (“working in”), but you wouldn’t start with a weight you’ve never attempted before for 8 reps without warming up at all.
Secret societies! This is so unexpected and interesting because I didn’t read that far into the description! Set in a military school and Sam is from a military family JUST LIKE ME! Oh, yeah, that’s not how my family is and this secret society stuff is going on a little too long. This book could be 100 pages shorter and I would be fine with it.
What I really like about Rites of Passage is not the will-it-or-won’t-it-be-a-sequel ending, but that it’s so unlike other books right now. I like what I like and I want to read what I like, and I was worried that Rites of Passage was going to be a bit of a clunker for me because military school is not boarding school, but it was so interesting (I want to say “refreshing” but I feel like a book with this much violence towards women can not be deemed refreshing because that is not like a strawberry lemonade AT ALL) to read a book that goes so many different places than most YA.
Part of me is even hoping for this to be a secret series, despite how much I hate a secret series. I wouldn’t mind spending some more time with Mac and the rest of the Alphas.
Paperback Heart 