As school is coming closer to an end not many teens are reading for enjoyment but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good books on the market.

A good book that is out now is Asking for It by Louise O’Neill. Asking for it is a book about an 18 year old girl, Emma O’Donovan in an Irish town. Desperate to prove people wrong, she does something almost out of character. She goes to a party, but the book isn’t based around the party it’s based around the morning after.

After the party she’s found on her porch by her parents. Emma is unconscious, bloody, beaten, battered, disheveled and other words you can think of. To her dismay she can’t remember what had happened to her the night before. But what she does realize is that something is seriously wrong, everybody is isolating her and ignoring her.

Of course, somebody posted pictures of Emma on Facebook (yes, apparently people still use Facebook) under the name “Easy Emma.” As more and more people see the photos, the police get involved and the entire community is in turmoil.

This tale makes you especially uneasy as it’s in the first person. Slowly, you see how a girl goes from girl to object. She doesn’t even feel like herself anymore, she feels like it’s not her body.

This book is a really real book. People often struggle to relate and to imagine the character as a real person, as a friend,or as a sister. But this book helps you make the connection to the real world. 

Despite being highly unlikable in the beginning Emma still doesn’t deserve anything that happened to her. It’s sad that  so often you see people getting taken advantage of because they’re out of it. And more often than not the guys gets away with it. For some reason the girls lives with guilt and depression, while they carry on with their lives like nothing happened.

This book doesn’t provide many answers but it does raise some questions. It raises questions about victim blaming, social media, consent and everything else under that umbrella.

I think that its good that as a society we talk more about the issues that are brought up in this book. Most of the times the victims of these situations are scared to speak out for one reason or another which isn’t good.

Parents of teens and teens should read this book, so they see what could happen and the effect of their actions.