***Trigger Warning: deals with rape and especially its aftermath and recovery

Two years ago Ashley Lawrence was raped. The trial against the boy who raped her played it down, convicting him of sexual assault, which carries a lesser sentence. Now he’s getting out of prison earlier than expected. For two years, Ashley’s had to try and learn to cope with her trauma. She has a strained relationship with her family, is estranged from her brother Derek, and still gets flak at school for ‘being the one who got football cancelled’. Two years ago, Ashley Lawrence was raped. Today, she’s taking back control of her life.

Told from both Ashley, and Derek’s viewpoints, and alternating between two years previous, and present day, Blount’s Someone I Used to Know is a psychological exploration of trauma and recovery. It is a story about how one incident can come to define your entire life. In Ashley’s case, it was a horrific violation of womanhood. And it’s a story about learning to live beyond that incident. It will shape you, yes, how could it not? But it doesn’t have to define you. It was nice to see Ashley’s viewpoint balanced by her brother’s experiences. She struggled with the trauma, but Derek’s struggled with guilt. I had never really considered that there are ‘secondary survivors’ to rape, those people closest to the victim, who deal with the feeling that they should have seen it coming, or stopped it from happening, that they could have done more.

The intense emotions that Ashley and Derek both felt were imminently believable. Beware! You will need tissues! Several times I found myself completely choked up. I wanted to yell at Ashley and Derek, to shake them and tell them to be honest and open with each other. I’m glad they finally did. Part of Ashley’s rage at her brother had to do with accidentally overhearing Derek say something, and misunderstanding what was behind it. I grok how damaging that can be, and it dredged up dark memories for me. They’re ones I’ve come to better understand over the years, but it can still stab a needle in my heart.

It’s really disgusting to think that Vic got away with raping a young woman, and how people seemed to think he the injured party. Or that people brushed her rape off as being Ashley’s fault. Reading this also really helped me find perspective on my broken friendship thanks to Dumbass Trump. I chose to break with people I had been friends with for decades, when I learned how rabidly Trump they were, this being right before election. In one case, this opened a dialogue to discussion. In the other two, they supported Rump’s misogynistic and sexist comments by saying it was just ‘locker room talk’ that ‘all guys do’ and people (like me) should stop making a big deal about it. I realised I didn’t know these people as well as I thought, and that our core values were very different. They told me I was overreacting, and got mad at me. I was horrified. Had this male friend every spoken about me like that, with his male friends? And how could the female friend agree? How could they support a president who thought sexual assault was okay and acceptable? And yet, deep down, some part of me kept wondering if I had overreacted. Reading this helped me be at ease, knowing that no, I hadn’t. I’d acted on my ethics and morals.

From helping others truly understand the emotions caused by trying to cope with such trauma, to exploring rape culture and how males passively or actively support it and how they can start putting an end to it, there are many great lessons buried in this book. Highly recommended!

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Barclay Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.