Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

#1 New York Times Bestseller

Ratings Explanation

Language: “Hell”,  “Whatever”?  It’s just a code word for the f-word, follow by “you”.

Sexual Content: Reference to PMS – “Pissed-at-Men-Syndrome”.  Sexual Innuendo.  The male volleyball players were “eye candy”.  Ashley, the bikini clad blond, zeroes in on Will.  Ronnie is attracted to Will.  “Marcus walked over to Blaze and folded her into a long, lingering kiss that seemed wildly inappropriate in public.”   Blaze nibbles on Marcus’ neck, he ignores that.  “He was sick of the way she (Blaze) always hung on him whenever they were out in public.  Sick of her in general.  If she weren’t so good in bed, if she didn’t know the things that really turned him on, he would have dumped her a month ago for one of the three of four or five other girls he regularly slept with.”  Marcus has his eye on Ronnie, she was “sort of upscale, trampy style”.   Marcus admired “that dynamite little body.”  Ronnie takes a quick peek at Marcus and he wonders what she’d be like in bed.  “Probably wild, most of them were with the right kind of encouragement.”   Will’s ex-girlfriend, Ashley suggests that Will join Scott and Cassie at her house, since her parents were in Raleigh.  Scott tries to persuade Will to go to Ashley’s house, to “Free Willy”.  Scott suggests just hooking up with Ashley.  Marcus suggests that Blaze was telling Ronnie about her mother’s sexy boyfriend and their late night trapeze acts.  Lance’s job at the motel is to clean the sheets after the noontime crowd rolls through.  Ronnie wants to sleep outside by the turtle egg’s nest, with Will.  However, she knows her father will object.  Will and Ronnie kiss, multiple times.   Marcus is drunk.  “He’d have Blaze first and then maybe a couple of others after that, if he got Blaze ripped enough to pass out.  Or maybe he’d hook up with some dumb little hottie, even if Blaze was sober enough to realize what was happening.”  Hot and heavy make-out session.  Ronnie says they’ve got to stop.  Ronnie loves Will,  “She wanted her first time to mean something, to happen with someone she cared deeply about.”

Violence: “Illegal Fireworks Suspected in Church Blaze – Pastor Injured”,  Ronnie’s friend Kayla is “Date Raped”.  GHB was slipped into her drink, and she vaguely recalls being in a room with three guys, she had just met.  Three rough guys, and one girl, Blaze, play with fire.  Marcus knew that the worse he treated girls, the more they wanted him.  Marcus throws a fireball at Ronnie to see how far he can push her.  Marcus set a boat on fire and watched it burn.  Teddy and Lance stole booze, and beat a bald guy unconscious at the airport before taking his wallet.  They also painted swastikas on the synagogue.  Marcus wants violence.  Blaze sprays roundup on Mrs. Banderson’s flowers, which slowly kills them.   One of Blaze’s mom’s boyfriends sneaked into Blaze’s room at night.  Marcus follows Ronnie.  Ronnie realized that there is a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.  She thinks Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs, has a lot in common with Marcus.  Ronnie threatens Ashley, “I’m going to punch those bleached teeth right out of  your mouth.  Got it?”  Blaze’s shirt catches fire at one of their “shows” on the boardwalk.

Adult Themes: Ronnie is arrested twice for shoplifting.  A reference to the Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin’s death.  According to Ronnie, her father, Steve, walked out on their family.  According to her mother, Ronnie would rather spend her time hanging out in clubs. “Steve believes he is a failure.  He is forty-eight years old.  His marriage had ended, and his son was growing up without him.”  Ronnie has the usual signs of teenage rebellion, purple streaks in her hair, and black fingernail polish.  Kim, Ronnie’s mother rants, “You could have come back to New York again.  You didn’t have to travel around the country, you didn’t have to move here…you could have stayed part of their lives.”   Infidelity, Kim cheated on Steve.  Reference to Ronni’s mom almost blowing a gasket when Ronnie lied about where she was going and traveled from New York to Philadelphia with Rick, a rough guy, who had a tattoo of a spiderweb on his neck and more piercings in his ears than her friend, Kayla.  Ronnie dumps Rick, when she realizes that if she continues to see him, he will pressure her to take whatever drugs he is taking.  Some of Ronnie’s friends smoke pot, a few have done cocaine, ecstasy, or even meth.  Blaze explains that her Dad lives with his girlfriend, his third since the divorce.  The girlfriend is only a few years older than Blaze, and she is a stripper.  Blaze’s mother has a boyfriend, and he is a loser.  Beer drinking.  Blaze is kicked out of her mother’s home, and she asks Ronnie for food money.  When Steve’s father died, Steve told him he loved him, and his response was, ” You sound like a woman when you talk like that.”  Marcus was bad news for Blaze, and for Ronnie.  Ronnie stereotypes southerner’s as “wearing NASCAR hat and chewing tobacco.”  Steve’s face is covered with blood. He has stomach cancer.

Summary

Ronnie, a nearly eighteen year old girl, is sent to North Carolina with her younger brother to spend the summer with her estranged father.  She has not communicated with her father, Steve, since her parents’ divorce.  She believes her father walked out on the family.  Ronnie rejects her father’s attempts to befriend her, and threatens to return to New York.  She immediately befriends a rough crowd of friends. She then falls for Will Blakelee, a privileged local boy.  Ronnie experiences her first “summer romance”.  When everything seems perfect, she realizes that her father has been given a death sentence –stomach cancer.  Ronnie spends the fall caring for him until his death.

I was disappointed with the overt sexuality and violence that consumed the first half of book.   However, the latter half redeemed the trashy portion and  I loved the beautiful story of the father/daughter relationship.

©2010 The Literate Mother