Why did I even read this? It was so bad and it didn't even look good. The characters and plot were so inconsistent and ridiculous. It was like "oh no I stabbed someone LOL" and five minutes later "I am a horrible person" and then five minutes later "it felt so good" and then five minutes later "I am across the world now and will now bring up my childhood trauma."
It was just a ridiculous book all around, but not in a very entertaining way. ( )

(Full disclosure: I received a free e-ARC for review through NetGalley. Content warning for violence against women, including rape and sexual assault. Caution: this review contains some vague spoilers.)

"Shit like this is why I trust no man. You can’t ever tell who’s a hog or not just by looking at their face. Better to assume they all are."

It's the end of junior year, and lifelong BFFs Trixie Denton and Lux Leesburg are planning a road trip to Fever Lake for the long weekend. But their plans go sideways when they make a pit stop at a local Pinesborough State (West Virginia) University bar. Trixie walks into the bathroom, just in time to catch a "bearded frat hog" sexually assaulting Lux. Trixie stabs him in the gut - and then in the crotch, for good measure - and the pair flee into the night.

Convinced that the cops won't believe that Trixie acted in self defense, the girls hatch a half-baked plan to keep on running: leave their constricting, hardscrabble lives behind for some place better - Austin, Santa Fe, or California. Disappear into the American West, as it were (or as if this was the 1860s).

Only problem is, the authorities quickly link their disappearance to the murder of Bryce Grimaldi, "son of local Pinesborough State University president, Weston Grimaldi," one of the richest and most well-respected old money men in the area. While his frat brothers rage and mourn the senseless death of an upstanding college student, a promising young man with his whole life ahead of him, the women unlucky enough to share Bryce's orbit paint a different picture: Bryce was a well-known sexual predator (surprise! /s). As Trixie and Lux traverse their way across the United State, a #MeToo movement ignites on the Pinesborough State campus.

As much as I wanted to love the fuck out of TROUBLE GIRLS, the story just fell flat for me. For starters, the writing was ... not my bag? This feels like an unpolished first draft at best.

The story is told from Trixie's perspective, and her voice just rubs me the wrong way (I love pie as much as Dean Winchester, but she uses pie as a metaphor entirely too often). I never felt like I got to know Trixie, or at least not beyond her childhood trauma (which explains the whole "hog men" thing, btw). Trixie is more or less defined by two things: her past sexual abuse, and her love for Lux. And Lux? She has pink hair and a vintage Canon camera, and that about sums up her personality.

In an ideal rape revenge romcom, I would have been rooting for these two crazy girls to get together, but it's difficult to muster up excitement for a romance - even a queer one! - when you couldn't care less about its participants. It was meh at best.

They also make a lot of outrageously stupid decisions - and no, I don't include running among them (the justice system is anything but for sexual assault survivors, and Weston Grimaldi and his $$$$ further stack the deck against our antiheroes). Rather, they waste their small reserve of cash on crap no one needs, like costume jewelry and touristy trinkets. They zero in on California as their escape, as though it's in a different country (or parallel universe) than where they murdered a man.

And so much of the poor decision making is fueled by their dysfunctional relationship, and Trixie's almost pathological desire not to upset Lux. The whole thing is uncomfortable and even embarrassing at times. Lux comes off like a petulant child; sometimes it feels as if the pair are treating their flight as an extended road trip.

I'm a sucker for a good rape revenge story, but TROUBLE GIRLS ain't it. The marketing team compares it to THELMA & LOUISE - but TROUBLE GIRLS lacks the tragic, fuck the world denouement of THELMA & LOUISE, ending not in a bang but a whimper. Likewise, it's missing the interrogation of rape culture and compelling protagonist that make Mindy McGinnis's THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES one of my all-time favorite rape revenge stories.

I kept waiting for TROUBLE GIRLS to find its LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN moment - especially as Rubin teases us with scenes of Trixie and Lux following the media coverage of their case, and occasionally chiming in on the message boards themselves. To wit:

"But know there are girls like us, waiting in the wings. Girls with knives on their fingers and razor blades for teeth. Girls, like me, who will gut you like a fish the minute you try and lay a hand on one of us ever again. You won’t know who it is until it happens. By then, it’ll be too late, the knife too deep in your intestines, the smile too bright on the girl’s face."

I'm not alone in thinking this is a battle cry, right? But for all her piss and vinegar, all her “Let’s go light some shit on fire" posturing, the most Trixie can manage is...stomping on some Confederate lawn flags and slashing the tires of a group of racist bikers. Like, babe, you're a hunter now! Let's go bag some hog men!

Even as she realizes that she started something BIG, Trixie doesn't even have the courtesy of engaging with the Intersectional Feminist Union directly - you know, those black and brown girls who she left to fight the Grimaldis and hog boys on their own. At least have their backs with an online confirmation that Bryce was a rapist! Seems like that would have been a little more useful than empty threats posted on Neanderthal message boards.

I don't know, there's just so much wrong with this story. Chalk it up as my first major disappointment of 2021.

If you're looking for a good rape revenge book, might I suggest:
- THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES by Mindy McGinnis
- THE SWALLOWS by Lisa Lutz
- THEY NEVER LEARN by Layne Fargo
- THE NOWHERE GIRLS by Amy Reed
- VIGILANTE by Kady Cross
- & of course, Stieg Larsson's MILLENNIUM series. ( )