The Opposite of Innocent by Sonya Sones
Published by HarperTeen on September 4th 2018
ISBN: 0062370316
Pages: 272
Goodreads

Lily is a fourteen-year-old who’s been “in love” with her parents’ friend, Luke, since she was a little girl.  He’s coming back from overseas to stay with them for a while after two years away, and she hopes that maybe he’ll be able to see her as a woman now and not a girl.  Luke (age 29) does seem to return her interest, and seemingly innocent flirting leads to kissing, which leads to way more than Lily bargained for.  Sones’s novel in verse walks us through Luke’s seduction of Lily from inappropriate teasing to emotional abuse to rape.  This all takes place right under her parents’ noses.  There’s another adult in her life who makes remarks that seem to indicate that she knows what’s going on, but she never reaches out to Lily to help or step in to stop it.

While the book does an excellent job of showcasing how an older man could manipulate a young girl, it does miss the mark in a major way.  Sones gets exactly right many of the trademarks of pedophiles and emotional abusers, as well as naïve and obsessed teens.  But where she chooses to end the book is when Lily finally realizes that she needs to get help.  It’s great that Lily finally has that moment of clarity that she needs to go to someone else for assistance, but the reader is left not seeing how she does it, or the journey that she has to take to get out of the relationship.

The book is being touted as important and timely to the “me too” conversation, but for it to have any meaning in that regard, it needs to show how Lily got strong and fought back, and we aren’t shown any of that.  We do get a brief author’s note at the end stating that what Luke does to Lily is wrong and that when Lily asks for help, it starts a chain of events that will lead to Luke getting arrested and receiving punishment he deserves, which frankly, seems incredibly naïve on the author’s part.  That’s the goal, of course, but not always the outcome.  She does also include abuse organizations should readers recognize themselves in Lily’s situation and need to reach out for help.

Overall, though the book means well, I don’t think it accomplishes its goal, and I worry that it could do more harm than good.  I do not recommend this book for purchase.

Reviewed by Kara Reiman, Walker Memorial Library, Westbrook