Radical

I have a soft spot for outside-the-box, angry, smart, sensitive characters—and E.M. Kokie is a master at creating them. She did it with Matt Foster in Personal Effects, and she does it again with Bex, her sixteen-year-old, gun-savy lesbian survivor in Radical.Nobody gets Bex—not her wimpy father, her image-conscious mother, or her petty brother. Not even her love interest, Lucy. All that hurts, but it doesn’t stop Bex from following her convictions and moving forward with her plan. She’s a radical, after all, in the deepest sense of the word: someone who digs past the surface to the root of things, and tries, with all her heart and mind, to live her life there. In fact, this book is Bex’s ride to the root of who she is, and who or what it makes sense to be loyal to— to family, society, or herself?Radical is my kind of book: a passionate protagonist, big issues, unexpected turns…not to mention tastefully done love scenes. When my outside-the-box, ten-year-old daughter hits sixteen, this will be one of the first books I put into her hands.

RADICAL is a timely book, with its portrayal of prepper culture. It gives us that culture from the inside, which helps a reader understand how someone could be so paranoid and ready for violence. I was simultaneously horrified and sympathetic to the central character. A good read.

I read a lot of books about young queer women and they're all fun but mostly forgettable. This one is going to stick with me. Props for somehow making a part about changing a car lightbulb also a sexy scene about consent. And great, satisfying ending. I would definitely read a sequel.

Once you start Radical you cannot stop. This page turner sucks you in and you connect with the characters right away. Kokie does a wonderful job with description, that you feel like you are standing right beside the characters in their world. Radical approaches modern day topics that our young adults should be talking about.I highly recommend reading this book.

This is such a book with not easily forgettable storyline. Very interesting storyline indeed. I want to read more from this author.

Pacing drags in a few places (especially in the first half) but overall a good book. I enjoyed the ending.

This realistic contemporary novel is for mature young adults and up. I say that because it has some light lesbian sexual interplay. But it is a worthy read for any young adult especially those concerned about an upcoming societal collapse.Bex, short for Rebecca, is a 16-year-old obsessed with survival in the upcoming chaos. She is a gay young woman who is not yet come out but her clothes and hair and demeanour mark her as someone different. Her parents do not accept her as she is and her mother is driven to change her and make her fit in with her idea of a daughter.Bex loves guns. This concept is so foreign to me I thought I might have trouble connecting, but the author, E. M. Kokie, smoothly brings us into the world of rifles, hand guns, bows and arrows, and more. Whether or not we believe in society's eminent collapse and the necessity of strategic preparation, we understand how deeply Bex does.The author deftly steers us in one disastrous direction and then presents us with another, more surprising but also more logical, disaster. Bex, who has done nothing but train to prevent ever becoming helpless or under the control of another, finds herself in exactly that situation. For the sake of her family, she endures the unendurable. She must make the most difficult decision of her life. The consequences will change her future and all her relationships forever.Seldom does a book ever keep me up to three in the morning reading but by the time I was halfway through, I was committed to finishing it. Bex may be as different from me as morning is from night, but I wanted this girl to survive intact and couldn't sleep not knowing what was going to happen to her. There are no happy endings in real life but the author leaves us with hope for a better life for a courageous, loyal, young woman who was never given a break.I received this book as a free Library Thing Giveaway.

This one was off to a slow start, and it was pretty much slow throughout. What compelled me to finish this book to the end was wondering whether this Clearview group was legit or if there was something more to them.You also follow through Bex and her life at home, which doesn’t seem very pleasant to start with. Her mom tries to change her despite her orientation, there’s financial issues at the home, and her brother is, quite frankly, a jerk. You quickly figure out Bex is into guns, and survival training. There’s extensive description on how she takes care of the guns, how she loads them, fires them, and we can go on. It gets tedious and lets the plot slow to a crawl. If you want intrigue and surprises, this isn’t going to happen until much later. Much much later.There’s also focus on Bex and Lucy. They both seem to compliment each other and there is slight chemistry between the two of them but it’s not a romantic type of love story that you get if that’s what you’re looking for. They’re polar opposites and compliment one another but you also get that feeling it’s nice while it lasts.There isn’t much to the plot until the last third of the novel, which is disappointing. However it’s jarring to see how much of the concept of survivalism is drilled into Bex and pushes her to the edge to the point of becoming paranoid over every minute detail. It’s sad to see what her parents attempt to make her do, when it comes to the subject of her brother. It’s also disappointing to see hardly any mention of Clearview except for smidgens here and there and although it plays a part in the plot, it’s not what you think and you wish there was more to it. It would have made the book much more interesting.It wasn’t the best, but not the worst either. I’d suggest to take this out from the library instead of a purchase.