Grown

This. Book. 

Wow. 

I felt changed after I read it and talked about it with everyone who would listen. Not only is this book a riveting, fast-paced read, but it’s an important novel about assault, grooming, and the abuse of power.

The protagonist is an aspiring teenaged singer who gets discovered and then manipulated and abused by a much older celebrity R&B artist. When she wakes up with her hands covered in his blood and finds him dead, she realizes she has no memory of what occurred the night before. This novel was enticing as much as it was heartbreaking.

This is a bit of a cheat as I never questioned if the narrator of Grown is a psychopath–a murderer perhaps, and a wildly sympathetic one if so—but her “love interest” and abuser could qualify. As you watch a mega-famous musician entrap a teenaged, aspiring singer, it truly gets under your skin how closely his grooming mirrors common romance tropes. And once he’s killed, the plot ignites into an escalating series of twists that pushes the “unreliable narrator” device to its most mind-bending. Did Enchanted kill her abuser? Are we sort of glad? Mercifully, Grown leaves no loose ends, it… show more.