Brutes by Dizz Tate.
Reviewed: March 22, 2024.

3.5 stars.

In Falls Landing, Florida-a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers-something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out. What they uncover will continue to haunt them for the rest of their lives.

"Brutes" was a quick and tilt-a-whirl book. It was sort of addictive - I blasted through it in under three days as I shuttled back and forth on busses and ducked my head over my tablet during 15 minute breaks. It's a strange little saga following a group of girls who refer to them as 'we' and 'us', so inseperable is their bond, as they observe their town's unfolding after the disappearence of the local preacher's daughter. The girls are weird and brutish and unconventional as they get bitten by ants and speculate about the monster hiding in the untouchable lake. The story is interspersed with excerpts from the girls' futures where we find out that sadly the collective of 'we' has been split up into simple first person.


I have a few different things to say about this book. I thought the POV choices were really interesting and I loved how the world of sticky childhood disintegrated when hitting the future chapters, the way the mundane permeated everything. But as for critiques, this books comes across as trying too hard to imitate more well-established 'literary' books in its genre in a way that feels insincere and without meaning. The setting is oppressive, almost claustrophobic, which I appreciated, but I feel that maybe the book was trying to hard to present itself as having a certain vibe than actually going through with putting any substance behind that appearence.

Overall I did like this book, but I see what it could have been and consider what went wrong; too muddled, too obsessed with appearences, this book is enjoyable but, once you finish reading it, you realize that it is in fact a bit shallow.