The Truth About Alice

The Truth About Alice comes from the same author as Moxie. It's also about small, high school football-obsessed Texas town. 

This one deals with a single rumor and how it grew viciously, life-destroyingly out of hand. 

If you want to read it, don't read any more of this review. I'm going to spoil everything. 

The book is mostly written from four different perspectives, not one of which is Alice's and she's the one the rumor is about. You finally get her point of view in the final chapter. 

The mess starts with a rumor. Elaine threw a party and Alice had sex with two boys (Brandon and Tommy) while she was there. Not long after, Brandon dies in a car accident because Alice was sexting him and it distracted him. Brandon being the #1 quarterback football hero of the town, everyone who just thought Alice was a slut before is now out for blood. 

So first we've got Elaine. Elaine is one of the most popular girls in school. She's a little different because she's curvy and she's definitely got issues with her body image, unlike your stereotypical popular girl with the perfect body. But she's also completely shallow and basically useless. 

Then there's Josh, who was Brandon's BFF. He's a boring jock guy. 

Kelsie was Alice's best friend but slowly dropped her after the slut rumors began. 

And finally, there's Kurt, who's the school genius/social outcast. 

Oh, and Alice. Alice has short hair and wears more formal clothes, like pencil skirts and open-toed sandals to school. Until she becomes the target and tries to hide in giant hoodies and jeans. 

I'll try to put together something of a timeline. So there's Elaine's party. Brandon is flirting with Alice and before the end of the party, he tells Josh and some of the girls that he and Tommy (a college student who went to their high school) both slept with Alice that night. 

Truth is, neither of them did. But Alice's rejection hurt Brandon's ego, so he lied about her, then let the rumor spin out of control. He admits this to Kurt, his next door neighbor and secret confidante. 

Alice becomes the school slut and is abandoned by everyone except Kurt, who's had a crush on her for ages. He overhears her asking for extra credit in a math class and offers to tutor her. 

Not long after school starts, Brandon's mother asks him to go to the store. He and Josh have been hanging out, drinking beers, but they're both used to drunk-driving so they go. In the car, Brandon becomes distracted by his phone and crashes. He's killed, Josh is injured. Josh ends up telling Brandon's mother that it was Alice who was texting Brandon. 

Truth is, Josh was jealous of Brandon's constant lineup of girls. Brandon went to text Alice and Josh grabbed the phone from him. That's what caused the accident. This tidbit is the only thing interesting from Josh's chapters. And he might be gay but that's never explored, only hinted at. 

Now everyone blames Alice for Brandon's death and the bullying gets worse. There's an entire stall in one of the girls' bathrooms dedicated to Alice graffiti. 

Kelsie contributes an abortion rumor to the mix. Now Kelsie's got a good secret to hide herself. Alice once didn't tell her the truth about messing around with an older guy. When Kelsie called her on it, Alice blamed Kelsie's being a virgin for Alice's unwillingness to talk about sexual things with her. So Kelsie was out to get herself some experience and had a fab 3-minute deflowering by Tommy (one of the guys rumored to have slept with Alice at the infamous party). Kelsie, whose mother is an obsessed Christian who demonstrates in front of women's clinics, got knocked up. And where does Mom take her? To the same clinic for an abortion. Kelsie blames Alice for all of this because she's a fucking moron. 

Meanwhile, Alice and Kurt are growing friendlier as their tutoring sessions continue. But it eventually comes out that he's known Brandon lied about what happened at the party the entire time and did nothing about it. She gets rightfully angry, but they make up and in her ending chapter, it's hinted they'll be a couple. 

This book is a fast read and it's well-written. It's probably also quite realistic, but that makes it honestly wholly unsatisfying. 

Elaine never gets any sort of lesson learned from her popular girl bullying. She's not an awful person, but she's not a good one either. 

Kelsie is truly a terrible friend. She'll never explain her secret to Alice, who will never fully understand the real reason her former BFF turned against her. Kelsie puts her own popularity ahead of Alice and I don't think she'll ever be any remotely like a good person unless someday she grows a backbone. The sad thing is, she's well-aware of this fact. 

Josh is just there. And he'll never tell the truth about what happened in the car. 

So literally none of the assholes ever get any sort of comeuppance. Not a thing. 

I do like Kurt, but it was kind of creepy that he had this big crush on Alice, used her bullying to get closer to her, then ended up actually getting to be with her. I think Alice deserves better than that. It's not that he's bad, but it still reads as opportunistic on his part. I think they should have been friends and that's it. Hinting that they'll be a couple disturbs me. 

Read this one if you like teen drama and don't mind not being at all satisfied with how anything comes out. But honestly, there are a lot better books out there.

MOXIE

I'm gonna do this one a little different because I watched the film version on Neflix before I read the book, and I feel both are worth discussing at the same time. 

The basic premise of Moxie is that a small town girl with an ex-Riot Grrrl for a mom gets fed up with the blatant sexism at her school and starts an anonymous feminist zine that she puts in the girls' bathrooms. This starts the Moxie revolution. 

The main characters of the book are decidedly Viv and her mom. Both have pale skin and long black hair and the girl on the cover doesn't exactly look white, but Viv is referred to as white later on in the book. Not sure what the point of making them look like they might not be 100% white only for it to be meaningless. In the movie, both characters are blonde. Initially, I wasn't sure about the change from dark to blonde, but Viv's looks have nothing to do with a non-white identity, so it honestly doesn't matter much if they're suddenly blondes. 

I'm going to come right out and say it: I loved the movie, but I only just really liked the book. The movie is actually better in almost every way except one, but that one is pretty fundamental. It's Viv and her mom. I found them so much better in the book. Movie Mom is pretty cool, but I don't like that she hides her new relationship from Viv. Book Mom doesn't do that. Movie Viv was okay, but I didn't like how she handled the relationship reveal or how she treated Seth during the dinner table fight. Those things don't happen in the book. Book Viv takes her time to come to terms with John, her mom's boyfriend, but that's mostly because she feels her mom can do better. She eventually accepts that he makes her mom happy, so she's okay with him by the end, though they're never actually shown interacting more than once or twice. But the relationship between Viv and her mom is at the core of both book and movie, and I really loved how close they're portrayed. The book shows it even more than the movie does. It's great. 

I'm just going to keep going with the characters. The next ones are Viv's maternal grandparents. They're typical Texas grandparents. Maybe a little more accepting. They're not in the movie at all, but they didn't add anything to the plot either, except maybe to show Viv as being dutiful. Viv's father died when she was a baby in the book, whereas in the movie, her parents appear to be divorced. That was a part of the movie that wasn't handled well. None of that was ever explained and it was part of the dinner table blowup scene. 

Claudia is Viv's best friend in both versions. Book Claudia is incredibly short and at least part Hispanic. Movie Claudia is tall and Chinese-American. Book Claudia is way less involved in the entire plot than Movie Claudia. Book Claudia only really gets involved after suffering from a sexual assault that the principal does nothing about. Movie Claudia's excuse to not get involved is her strict mother, but also just that she has different methods of doing things. She finally does get into it and ends up playing a major role. The relationship between Viv and Claudia was far stronger in the movie.

Then we've got new girl Lucy. In the book, she's half Latinx. In the movie, she's Afro-Latinx. Both girls are strong characters, but Book Lucy is far quieter and actually more like Movie Claudia. It's she, not Claudia, that's targeted by the principal as the founder of Moxie. It's she, not Claudia, that's worried about getting into college. So her book character got turned more into Claudia, while Movie Lucy took a few aspects of Book Lucy but then just exploded as her own character. Lucy was my favorite. She's strong, takes no shit, and she's a leader. It's too bad that she and the other supporting cast took a bit of a backseat during the latter part of the movie. Definitely my biggest criticism of the movie right there.

The other characters are similar yet different. Movie Soccer girls Kiera and Amaya were there, but in a lesser role. The whole scholarship battle wasn't in the book. The book had the addition of two other soccer players: Marisela and Jane. Marisela is a badass and I loved her few scenes. I think they took some of her and gave it to Lucy in the movie. At one point, Viv catches Marisela and Jane kissing, which they ask her to keep a secret. I wish that had been more dealt with but it just wasn't. The movie was definitely more LGBTQ-friendly. Book Viv's friends include Kaitlynn, Meg and Sara. Meg and Sara didn't really do anything so they weren't missed from the movie. Kaitlynn in the book doesn't do much either. Movie Kaitlynn is the large-chested girl who gets picked on for wearing a tank top. The dress code violator in the book was Sara. The girls also wore bathrobes in the book, whereas in the movie, they all came to school in tank tops as protest. The tank tops were definitely the better way to go. CJ, the trans girl, is a character that was added for the movie, which disappoints me, because I really wanted to know if she got the part she auditioned for. The movie never tells us! 

Emma the popular cheerleader is similar in both versions, though the book version is more driven and studious.

Mr. Davies in the book is a sexist asshat who retires at the end of the year. Mr. Davies in the movie at least came around to being very supportive. 

The asshole football players were the same in both, though their actions are different in both versions. I'll get into that later. 

The principal is one of the biggest differences. In the movie, she's a woman who never does a damn thing about the blatant sexism...why? Because she's lazy? It's never really addressed properly. The principal in the book is Mitchell Wilson's father. Mitchell Wilson, who is the quarterback and the worst of the football assholes. So at least that makes sense. Of course he's going to let his kid run wild in the school. There are multiple other administrators who also do nothing about anything. 

And finally, there's Seth Acosta, the romantic interest. Seth in the movie is someone Viv has known her whole life. He used to be short and goofy, but now he's grown into tall and sexy. But movie Seth's biggest characteristic is that he is genuinely a nice guy. He cares about women and everyone's rights. He's so sweet with Viv and really wants to do everything right when it comes to their relationship. He's one of the best teen romance leads I've seen in...well, ever. He's that awesome. And then there's Book Seth. Sigh. Book Seth is The New Boy. He's the son of two artists who moved from Austin and for some reason, he chooses Viv to help him learn the whole small Texas town thing. In the movie, it was obvious Seth had liked her for a while. In the book, it's never explained how she catches his eye. He's into non-mainstream music and dresses in black. He's the cool boy, the boy of Viv's daydreams. Yet honestly, you never learn much about him. You meet his parents but who in the world is Seth? You never learn. I had absolutely no attachment to him, except he does do the draw on your hands thing and that was genuinely cool. The worst thing about him though is that he doesn't fully support Viv with Moxie or feminism. She keeps having to explain stuff to him. He's not an awful character but too much of the book is spent on him and more should have been spent on the female cast. 

So that's the cast. Now for one of the other differences and that is the types of sexism shown in both. The movie had Mitchell harassing Lucy, the list, Jason and his sexist shirts, the dress code, and the football team being focused on too much while the girls' soccer team, which actually wins, is not. Then there was the rape accusation at the end. That accusation in the book was actually an attempted rape, but otherwise it was the book that had the more serious problems. Mitchell doesn't bother Lucy much, but the boys do play a game the girls call "bump 'n' grab." They bump into girls and then touch them in different places. Mitchell gets Claudia in a lesser-used hallway and actually fondles her breasts under her shirt and the school does nothing about it. The list turns into March Madness, where the boys pick hot junior and senior girls and basically do March Madness brackets for them until one girl "wins" most Fuckable. The escalation of the events from the movie to the book (because I experienced them in that order) made the book almost seem unbelievable. Yet I'm sure there are schools where these things happen. That's the sad part. 

Neither book nor movie is perfect. The diversification of the movie cast makes Viv as the leader come across on the white savior side. This wouldn't have happened if they hadn't sidelined the supporting cast. Viv's leadership in the book is also much more toned down. Kiera comes up with one of the Moxie events and Lucy does another. The walkout idea is actually Emma's. So if the movie had taken the book's idea and spread around the ideas between the supporting cast, I think that would have balanced things out a bit more. And you know, they could have just spent some more time with the supporting cast, too. But overall, the movie does beat the book. Both of them are worth seeing/reading. They're just not above criticism.