Death, abuse, pain, scares, love, and passion; Rage: A Love Story is a tough read for the mind, if you’ve ever been in a abusive situation every word Julie Anne Peters writes on each page stays with you, even if you haven’t she makes it so real and so vivid that you can almost feel the bruises, the blood, even her broken bones that Reeve, her girlfriend, inflicts on her. I would always recommend this book to anyone in any type of situation, in a weird twisted way it is very sweet and loving, this book is more toward sympathetic and emotional people than goofy and silly.  Johanna watches Reeve all through high school they are now seniors and ready to leave high school, to Johanna Reeve is perfect can do no wrong and has the most amazing style, attitude, and love. But soon she starts to see that it’s not all that’s on the inside. Reeve lives in a meth and crack infested house where she and her twin brother sleep in closets to hind from her mother’s abusive brother in law. Having been abused all her life Reeve doesn’t know any different so when something stunning or major happens or even something that is minor but she takes it out of proportion she pushes back and ten times harder, having blackened Johanna’s eye, broke Johanna’s rib and nose, buster her lip, Johanna doesn’t go anywhere, she says its fine and she’s okay. The people and loved ones around her notice what is going on and Johanna loses all of them for Reeve. The cycle of domestic violence, the effects on abused children, gender issues, the loss of parents, hospice life, mental health counseling, cutting, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, are all thrown together in these two eighteen year olds life. It is a never ending cycle until Johanna’s older sister sends Reeve to a women’s health center and Johanna and her, Tessa her sister, move to Minnesota.  

As said in the title “Rage” the entire book reflects how the trauma of a life time full of anger and rage can ruin and haunt not only the direct victim but everyone else around them. Julie Anne Peters show how true the saying “love is blind” Johanna is in a fantasy of this delusion that she can truly help Reeve and Reeve loves her in every way. But how can a person love if they’ve never had love in anyway? The novel is placed during the last few months of senior year, this is very important because how Reeve and Johanna meet is by Johanna having to assist Robbie, Reeves twin brother, to graduate.  If Johanna wasn’t to assist Robbie Johanna would have had to live with only a thought of being with Reeve and never would have had to go through all she did.

She writes this book in a way I haven’t seen before. She uses Joyland -a euphoric place within Johanna’s head that she sees her perfect relationship with Reeve. She has extreme sex fantasies and emotional fabrications of who Reeve really is. To me Joyland gave the book that extra bit it needed, with all the pain and violence an occasional sight of pure love and compassion is desired, and that is what is given. If Joyland wasn’t inserted I think the book would be too detriment and intense to read straight through with no breaks for a lot of people.

Throughout the book each character went through a lot to get to who they were in the end. Especially Reeve, coming from a house full of hostility and pain, growing up with a twin brother with autism who tried to protect her at all costs who ended up being murdered along with their mother by their uncle who abused them since their father left; after she watched them get brutally stabbed and sliced Reeve ran to Johanna. Tessa and Johanna took her in and gave her somewhere to stay but when Johanna woke up she was gone. Soon Johanna was informed by Tessa that she had gone to a woman shelter, when Johanna went to see her she was completely different, she followed directions, she wanted to love and be happy and be with Johanna but alike Reeve Johanna had changed as well. She had been going to counseling for a multitude of reasons from the realization of being in an abusive relationship, to coping with the loss of both her parents due to health reasons and almost her sister, only mentally. In the last few pages of the book you see Reeve and Johanna separate but happily I really didn’t see that coming at all, it was bitter sweet and tear jerking. They went through so much together, Johanna taught Reeve what affection was, and Reeve taught Johanna that she’s worth more and that love comes in many ways but the both learned that violence, drugs, alcohol and sex can never solve an issue only coat over it.

Johanna tells Reeve she can take her away from all that, if Reeve will just love her. Since Johanna does this she takes on whole new issues of Reeve, who consumes all her thoughts, resisting Johanna’s presence, and even hits her. But to Johanna it’s normal for those things to happen to people who love each other. Then she fights with Novak and her sister, and the rest of the things in her life that were important and necessary before Reeve become unimportant just so Johanna can be with Reeve, like losing her job even being kicked out of the hospice center when Reeve tries to do inappropriate things in one patient’s room with Johanna. Johanna allows herself to be tormented due to the ungodly delusion of perfect love in an imperfect society. Because Reeve has been around drugs, alcohol, violence, abuse, bullying, poverty, and much more it has caused her to be emotionally detached from her world around her except with Robbie, her twin brother, this lifelong effect she has gone through one hundred percent contributes to the entire story of physical and emotional abuse toward Johanna.

All through the book Johanna has an animosity toward Tessa her older sister. As she thinks “Heaven forbid Tessa should go to bed one minute after nine. She couldn’t say, Come talk to me. Anytime.”  This is constantly repeated throughout the story line. Johanna has had a grudge on her for leaving Johanna to take care of their mother when she was dying. And neither coming home to help nor consoling in Johanna when she lost either of her babies, along with Johanna coming out to Tessa and for Tessa not to seemingly care. Johanna and Tessa’s rocky relationship had a lot to do with the entire book, Johanna always felt like she was alone and no one cared so she went to Reeve more and thought she could fix Reeve even though Johanna herself wasn’t healthy either. When Johanna separates from Reeve she begins to go to a counselor, Peters writes the therapist’s character like how you make fun of them “What does love mean to you, Johanna?” she says over and over in different forms. I feel like peters is use to going to counseling like that where it’s not really helpful but for some people they have to work it out inside of them. Using the simplistic short questions left it very dry and rigged, Johanna became irritated at all the questions that almost seemed like harassment. I think its written like this to purposefully make Johanna think way deep inside an detect that the love she thought she had for this girl wasn’t real. I really didn't like how she made her realize it but it was a easy way to finish out the book. "She eases open my bedroom door and slices through the darkness. Opaline edges outline the contours of her body. I can't see her face but i know its her." Joyland: Take 5, this was one of my favorite. How she starts it out and how innocent she makes Reeve out to be. Though it was very vague it let Johanna’s mind and the readers mind wonder to maybe who they would want to sneak into their room in the midst of the night. Its intriguing and mysterious and exactly what the reader needs to off set the tragedy.


  Just like Melissa on Goodreads said Johanna allowed everything to happen, yes the majority of abuse situations and books about it the person allows it to happen but i don't think this was a fault of the book. " For most of the book, I found myself wishing that she would finally grow a backbone and tell everyone off." states Melissa, Johanna was a push over through the whole book to everyone not just Reeve but also Novak, her best friend, and her sister, Tessa. So to me Johanna needed a back bone to everyone not just in her love life. It made it more realistic in my eyes for her not to fight back and always say everything is okay and shes fine despite the physical pain she went through. There are very few novels about LGBT groups and couples, not to mention domestic violence happening as well. In her second paragraph about Reeve when she states "She hates what she does to Johanna and yet, she doesn’t know how to control herself." I completely agree, it takes everything in Reeve not to break down and cry every time she leaves home much less when she breaks the one person other than her brother who loves and cares deeply about her.  Melissa backs what I said earlier in my opening paragraph "It would be difficult for anyone to read even if they haven’t been in any sort of an abusive relationship." its incredible how Peters makes you want to read no matter if you can barely see through the tears and the vivid images that she paints in your head. Having experienced even a slight violence in any sense could have taken you to a different realm in the book. If you allowed it to go deep then it would take you all the way to heart if you didn't it only got nerve deep but it still ran through your body like nothing else has before.

Rage is a story about two lovers who go through quite a bit with in their lives separate much less together. When they come together everything just escalates into hell.  The book is a tough read due to the abuse and substantial emotional and physical trauma. It also shows that no matter whom you are it can always get into situations that you don’t realize and refuse to accept. It showed to me that love is truly blind but if someone tries to give you some glasses to see out of you need to feel for them and try them on slowly but surely you’ll notice and more and more it becomes an active thing to stay around more than leaving and letting go.  

    Stress? I Don't have stress, stress is for old people. 
    "You think you're stressed!? Try going to school coming home cook, and clean for this family!" Momas and dads always exclame. 
    Well that's phony, I'm 16 years old and I'm stressed out everyday of my life, oh and if something isn't perfectly on time, all hell breaks loose! Now must of the timeI can deal with it and breathe through it. but those special times where you have to scream and cry and tell everyone in the world to leave you alone for their sake. Well here's a perfect example. 
     In January, i left everything i knew, everyone i loved, and my comfort zone to come to a new high school. My brother was in college and he was screwing up, and I was 15 and thought I ruled the world. I was a sophmore and I was proud! Now my old school was not the best school, there were over 4000 kids there and there was so mch drama! So my mother moved me 20 miles away. Doesnt seem that far, well when you cant drive it seems like it takes years. I registered for school and was mad as ever, I mean mugged everyone, I was in ROTC and I didn't know the Creed, and all my classes were so much farther behind than my old school, which you would think would be good, but no it wasnt, they taught so much different and I had no clue what they were talking about! And oh buddy I felt like crying every moment of every second. At Lunch I went to the bathroom and poured my eyes out, called my best friend at school, and she listened to me. After school walking to my mom's car, I broke down, I cryed all the way home and all night. I hated it. 
    Now that I'm here I found my place in this school, I don't feel like a no body and I belonged, well as much as you can belong in a judgemental high school setting, I wouldn't go back to Norcross, I miss my friends, and I miss the school, and being challanged, but I don't misst he chaos! 
    Breathe, sleep, eat, and take things slow. Everything works out in the end how it's supose to. So if you don't think my experience was as stressful as I truly belive it was, I'd like to see if you can top it.

    We rely on things that keep the world in balance, right? Why though? Because our mommy's and daddy's told us that's how it is? Or because God , or who ever your family believes in, made you who you are?
    I'm Zay I'm 19 and I live in Opecca. It's a pretty nice place. oh no I'm sorry I lied, it's hell here! Everyone walks around so god damn happy all the time like they don't sit at home and cry them selves to sleep. Around here no one has a say in anything. Everyone looks the same, talks the same, walks the same, hair is done the same, we all look like a bunch of clones. Well except me. I don't exactly fit in here, Mama doesn't really appreciate it either. Having no idea what to do with me, she just acts like I don't exist 90% of the time. I could care less that she thinks about me though. I am a girl, I have always been a girl, and I love being a girl, but not everything isn't normal with me.
    Granny said,"You're crooked, sum'in aint right wit chu you look like a stud but you're a bitch underneath it. Fix ya self or I'll have ta fix ya, got it!?"
    I love myself though, so I refuse to flee just because I don't please everyone by who I am. I am who God made me, that's what they teach you in Sunday school from the time your 4 years old, "You're all Gods little children," except if you're a little faggot like me.
    I'm in love, the most beautiful creature that I've ever laid eyes on. Five feet and five inches tall without her heals, that make her figure mesmerizing, just the height and stature that i can kiss her nose. Her locks are seemingly perfect falling down her back, so silky so bright. I met her three years ago, she came into mt work and from then on I knew it would be forever. She had a daughter, Vellencia, she's three now but she left the community with her grandmother when she was born, Amillyana didn't want her to grow up here. She hates it, where the men are pigs, clones, rapists and have no moral respect for anyone or anything, she couldn't let herself make the same mistake her mother made for her, to keep her daughter in a society like this one.
    It wasn't too long ago Mama walked in.  We thought she was at work and going out of the of the community so she can go around being the good girl everyone sees her as. But Amillyana and I had called out from work that day, since it was her 23rd birthday, and all wanted was me. So I gave her what she wanted, all of me.
    Amillyana yelling out, Mama busts in hollering, "Zay Taylor Errie! What in God's name do you think you're doing!? Who is this slut you brought into my house!?" My face and back were as read as her 6 inch stilettos that she kicked off at the stairs so we wouldn't hear her coming. That's when Mama found out the truth. I love women, a woman, my woman.
    Mama, she never understood, she was the most captious person I has ever known in my nineteen almost twenty years of living, a double life, a disgusting fake double life. ON the weekends she would leave the community and  do who knows what, I just know i would have to rehabilitate her before requisite church on Sunday. When Sunday came along and she would repent the same thing she has for the past twenty sum years, she would turn into the once again rude, glowering, hateful mother that i knew and everyone else refused to notice. Loving your mother and father, respecting them, doing what they tell you to do, after all she did give me life, but our home it was a secret, Opecca is a district of secrets.
    I never fully saw Amillyana again. Mama sent me away to the church, a cold hateful, place disrespectful to the human soul.  She has no idea what i had to go though.
    "She's crazy!"
    "She's Possessed!"
    "That's not my daughter!", everyone exclaimed around the town, Mama was the worst of all the townsmen. She completely disowned me; never saw me, and would tell everyone in the church what she has witnessed like they aren't doing the same or worse to their husbands. What's the difference? So what if we are woman, my body, mt sexuality, my morals, my life, my bedroom, not anyone else's.  I treat her like a queen she deserves to be when half of the women in this community go home to an inclement husband and children who walk all over her.
    One slab, one door, over head lights that swings slightly, one priest, two nurses who soon left, and me; that was it, no one would talk, no one would tell me whats going on the nurses laid me down while setting a pillow behind my head. "In the Name of Jesus Christ, our God and Lord," the priest started to mimic like he's done this a thousand times, "strengthened by the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, Mother of God..." He went on and on the lights started flickering suddenly then violently, table and door started to shake rapidly, the pillow underneath me flew and smacked the Bible out out from the priest's hand. He kept going, "Of Blessed Micheal the Archangel, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul and all the Saints..."
    Being put though an exorcist, I knew this is was going to be it. Mother ordered it, she wanted her daughter back, she hated everything about me, I wasn't hers anymore, I was alone in the world, no one came for me, no one loved me, no one felt what I had to do. Death, that's the type of life I live everyday from now on.
    I'll never see Mama again. Watching the love of my take her own life, I wished I could have stopped her and held her tight to tell her I was okay, and I love her. She had fled the day the church rung the bells that again another demon had been killed and balance was set back. Mama, Granny, and all the townspeople were happy once again. I have in myself, for now and for always, I am who I am.

 
Right-to-die man Tony Nicklinson died at home with his loving family around him. Tony Nicklinson is a 58 year old; paralyzed from the neck down after suffering a massive stroke 7 years ago. Last week he lost his in court case for the right that the doctors could medically end his life. The family solicitor Saimo Chahal said "Jane told me that Tony went rapidly downhill over last weekend, having contracted pneumonia." A man that has no life and no perpuse in life, is denies the right to be dead. He has lived in this way for 7 years, his friends and family watch him suffer the sadness and his pittyfull stature, shows that him dying in a peaceful, tranquil state, would be better than having to refuse food just so he can get the way of life he so despratly needs. So, Does he have the right to die?