The Revenge Artist
Philip Hoy
Contemporary Young Adult
Evelyn Hernandez is a high school junior who reads Shakespeare for fun, sews her own dresses, and keeps a sketch journal of her daily life. When Varsity quarterback Garvey Valenzuela breaks her heart, she sends him to the emergency room with a busted hand.
Add black magic to her resume…
Evelyn embarks on a dark journey of revenge when she discovers she has the power to make bad things happen by drawing them. Her emotional pain, isolation, and self-hatred lead her down a self-destructive path with dire consequences.
Uncaged Review:
Very well written, and a very intriguing storyline, and hitting on high school and the highs and lows of being in school, along with the social issues of sex in schools, self-cutting and bullying. But this book takes that to a new level. The story is told through our main character, Evelyn’s perspective. So we know mostly what Evelyn knows – we don’t get into anyone else’s thoughts. In a way, that works against the book. Evelyn isn’t a girl with the “in crowd,” more of a nerd girl who gets straight A’s, loves to draw and sews her own clothes. She has a few close friends, but all of them are constantly bullied in school. One day, the quarterback for the high school team, Garvey, asks her to go to a party, and secretly she’s been crushing on him for a while, she decides to sneak out with her best friend and go. What happens is that they trick her and try to film her about to have sex with Garvey (which she has never done before) and then they post it so the whole world can see. As you can imagine, the bullying ramps up in school, and when Evelyn starts drawing pictures of bad things happening, and then those things start coming true – almost exactly to her drawing. But how is it happening? Is it a way of predicting the future? Or is she a witch, with an evil soul? Is it a balance of good vs. bad?
I have my own theories, and so will every reader. The characters are easy to like, we’ve all been somewhat in Evelyn’s or one of the other characters shoes at one point in our lives, and it also reminds me why I truly hated high school. When a book can make you feel, it’s a hit for me. This books leaves a lot of decision making up to the reader, and any of the answers that you come up with, would not be right, or wrong. Reviewed by Cyrene
