Realistic and shocking

Alissa and Katherine can’t wait for the school year to end. They want to graduate and get out of this school that has become a nightmare. But there are still a few months to go and Kat and Alyssa will have to navigate the reality of bullying and boys before they’ll have the freedom they long for.

Destroying the wrong has two main themes at its heart.

The first is bullying. Well done to Ms Stone for tackling such a relevant and yet difficult topic! The reality and brutality of the bullying is eye-opening. Sadly, Ms stone is right too – with the advent of social media, bullying has reached a new low. Teens are cruel and have no qualms about splashing one another’s shame across media networks. While some of the scenes were a little cliched in terms of their angst, I felt that Ms Stone did a wonderful job of portraying the challenges that face many teens nowadays and hopefully, she will create some much needed awareness around this cruel practice.

The second theme is teen relationships. Ms Stone has so accurately portrayed the nervous, excited, jumble of hormones of a first physical relationship. The relationship between Matt and Alyssa progressed much too quickly for my liking and lacked softer emotions. This made me wonder if this is not a sign of the times. Sadly, the idea of girls discussing and planning the giving up of their most precious gift of virginity like it’s something to ‘get over with’, is shocking but true. The lack of respect and monogamy was annoying for me. I like my characters to have a bit of morality in their spines – but the simple truth is that not everyone does. Ms Stone expertly captured the naughty excitement and fear of wrong doing with her words.

There were some tense issues and some parts I felt were contrived. I would have also like to see a bit more depth in the lives of Kat and Alyssa – surely there is more to their lives that bullying and boys. But perhaps that is the whole intention of this novel. Perhaps these things consume our lives as teenagers to such an extent that we cannot see past them? I love a good book with an important message and this one has a few. It made me think past the end of the book and wonder. The story itself is pretty ‘normal’ and yet Ms Stone has managed to take a mundane part of life and turn it into something frightening, exciting, passionate, tender, naughty and eye-opening.