Run Rebel by Manjeet Mann
Rating:
Read before: No
Ownership: Purchased to read
Content Warnings: Domestic abuse, violence, gaslighting, arranged marriage, racism, bullying, mental health, drinking/alcoholism
I don’t always start a review by comparing the book to others, but due to the huge amount of content warnings, I want to place it right. Rub Rebel is powerful, but it is as if you had mixed Poet X with Monday’s Not Coming or Fight Like a Girl.
Now, if you have read any of those books, you will know they are gritty intense books about the not so pretty side of being a girl and trying to live life in a complicated family situation. And Run Rebel is about a girl who loves running and is good at it but her dad expects her to marry and not go on studying and she struggles to keep rising through the world when she keeps feeling the punches coming down.
It is a story about reacting and then acting, being reactive to proactive, but also about appreciating the things you have, the small respites, the little things sometimes you don’t consider or how opportunities may come.
I had to take some time as I read this as it is intense and you really feel for the characters, so please read it carefully, but the poetry approach is intense and also good at conveying the story quickly, in a way that makes it understandable. In the poem form of the story, the verses take away the fluff and give the narrator a voice unique to them that is as if they are writing the poems to tell their story, to vent and to breathe, like bleeding on the page.
Recommended for readers of intense stories, fans of Elizabeth Acevedo and any for the titles mentioned above or the authors.