Charlotte Kersten

Those who would suppress and destroy you stand not a chance when confronted with the power that lies within these pages . . .

Elliott D’Angelo-Brandt is sick and tired of putting up with it all. Every week, she attends a support group for teen victims of sexual assault, but all they do is talk. Elliott’s done with talking. What she wants is justice.

And she has a plan for getting it: a spell book that she found in her late mom’s belongings that actually works. Elliott recruits a coven of fellow survivors from the group. She, Madeline, Chloe, and Bea don’t have much in common, but they are united in their rage at a system that heaps judgments on victims and never seems to punish those who deserve it.

As they each take a turn casting a hex against their unrepentant assailants, the girls find themselves leaning on each other in ways they never expected—and realizing that revenge has heavy implications. Each member of the coven will have to make a choice: continue down the path of magical vigilantism or discover what it truly means to claim their power.

For Girls Who Walk Through Fire is a fierce, deeply moving novel about perseverance in the face of injustice and the transformational power of friendship.

Review

This was my choice for the Hidden Gem bingo square and I’m pleased to report that I definitely think it’s accurate to call this book a hidden gem! In many ways it’s one of those books I’ve come to call “Charlotte Catnip” books because it follows a diverse group girls finding solidarity and healing after sexual violence through their developing relationships with each other. Each girl’s situation is explored in its uniqueness, including her personal outlook, the specific impacts of her trauma, her family dynamics, and more. I really enjoyed reading about each one of them, and I loved seeing how their relationships developed over the course of the book.

I also really like how the book explores anger, revenge, and injustice post-assault because it’s very real about difficult questions and holds a lot of complicated experiences in mind at once. The book does a great job of showing just how enraging and disempowering it is to know that perpetrators are so rarely held accountable in a way that changes anything and that rape culture is deeply engrained to keep shaming/blaming/silencing survivors.

At the same time, it explores the possibility that a fixation on individual punishment/revenge may not always bring survivors the peace of mind that it feels like it will; however, this never feels preachy or condescending or dismissive in the way that it often is when someone tells you that “revenge is a life well-lived” because they just want you to shut up and get over it. The ultimate conclusion the book comes to, I think, points to the importance of widespread cultural change and feminist solidarity to enact that change – basically emphasizing the importance of primary prevention and showing how survivors can be foremost in that movement thanks to their own wisdom, strength, and healing.

The question that people always come back to when you have conversations about sexual violence, justice, and reform – “Well, okay, but what do we actually do with the people who still commit sexual assault??”- doesn’t get a conclusive answer here, for those who might be hoping for that, but I don’t necessarily see that as a weakness because of how much other ground gets covered and how much more space it’d take to chew that over properly.

The book is also written in a really fun, casual conversational style with a lot of parentheticals and asides that really let the characters’ voices and strong emotions/opinions shine. There are a lot of quirky details, media references and jokes that make it fun to read, and the author does a great job of evoking the setting of rich, beautiful Santa Barbara as a complex place beneath its idyllic and sun-soaked appearance. I guess I can’t say for sure how it would land for a younger reader, but it never really felt like it verged into cringey “How do you do, fellow teens?” territory with any of this.

I’ve read a few books with a rape revenge plot at this point in my reading project, and I think this is the one that feels the most successful to me so far. Needless to say it aligns most closely with my complicated feelings about the topic instead of playing it totally straight, but I also think its readability and spunkiness set it apart too. I mean it totally earnestly when I say that I think this book would have been really helpful for a younger version of myself to read, and that’s probably the highest compliment I could give to a book like this!