Luna's Reviews > Lead Us Not

I am so. fucking. disappointed.

I devoured this book in 12 hours. This, from the premise, is everything I love in a novel, but it was also painstakingly reminiscent of my own time at school. A sudden intense friendship, Catholic high school, confliction over whether I'm hitting the same milestones as my peers... hell, my friend, the one who I had a bordering-on-unhealthy relationship with was also a devout Catholic.

But the last two pages. God, the last two pages fucking ruined it for me. What would have been a 5 star book immediately dropped it down to 3.

The premise:

Millie and Olive have gone to high school together for the last few years, but have never really interacted until Olive moves in next door. Although initially uncertain around one another, they quickly develop a very intense friendship that edges on sapphic. However, Olive is in a relationship with Hunter, and she encourages Millie to start dating Leon. Olive, despite being from a religious family, has sex with Hunter and she regularly details it all to Millie. In turn, Millie feels compelled to sleep with Leon. She finds it middling and, when compared to Olive's experiences, disappointing.

Her friendship with Olive runs hot and cold. She finds Olive confusing at times, particularly as she (Olive) will quickly pull away for no discernible reason. There's never any thorough explanation as to why this occurs, but Millie suspects it's to do with her church's youth group.

They go to an interstate school retreat to the Kimberley, a remote region in the north of Western Australia. I can't recall it being strictly stated in the novel where the girls live, but given the author is based there, I'd say somewhere in suburban Melbourne. Olive and Millie share a tent. One night, all the girls go skinny dipping, and Olive and Millie join in. They return back to the tent, and talk while naked on their shared sleeping bags. When Olive says she's going to sleep, Millie masturbates. However, it seems like Olive was only feigning sleep.

The next day, Olive pulls away hard from Millie. She goes on another retreat, this time with her youth group, and the distance between them grows wider.

From here, Millie spirals a bit. She tries to rekindly a friendship with Jess, but so much distance has grown between them that she finds it difficult to bridge it. She grows listless, loses weight and tries to talk ADHD medication to help her final exams. All the same, she does well (she's always been academic and I felt it implied she was semidux) and although she doesn't have a particular aim for a career, she knows she wants to get into writing or journalism.

Here, Olive starts floating back into her life. She says she got into WAAPA, and her parents throw a celebratory dinner. Millie realises that Olive has been feigning that the two of them are still close friends and Millie plays along. Only after does Olive admit to her that she flunked her audition entirely; she is, however, going to ECU for performing arts (this uni, for those who don't know, ECU hosts the WAAPA programme). She plans to reaudition and then tell her parents.

There's a party. Olive and Millie are both in attendance. Someone suggests everyone kisses each other, which is a totally normal thing to do. Olive and Millie are the last to kiss.

The day Olive is leaving for Perth is the day of Millie's birthday. She comes over to talk. Sort of. Millie wants to hash out what happened but Olive is deflective. Finally they begin inferring- but never outright state- they each had feelings for each other.

'I couldn't start something with you and have Hunter at the same time. Once I realised that that was what was happening, we had to stop. He's not the only reason, but he is the cleanest reason.'

I was surprised to find that I understood what she meant.

[...]

'We can't be friends, then,' I said, eventually.

'Not now.'

[...]

'Maybe later, you said?' I continued.

'Maybe. If I'm home, you'll be right next door.'

I'm so fucking annoyed.

I didn't expect the girls to realise they were queer. Hell, I wasn't even entirely sure it would be that kind of book; I went in expecting something a little akin to the film Thirteen, where the girls do have a very unhealthy relationship that's a little riddled in being sapphic, but is much more about codependence.

It isn't right to call it a case of 'bury your gays', because the gays are never even mentioned (aside from some strange remarks by Olive's mother about 'gay boys'). Hide your gays? Never name your gays? I'm not even going to tag this as a queer book, because it's all a lurid promise that never realises itself.

Biggest disappointment of the year, by far.