Title: Violence Begets
Author: PT Denys
Genre: YA LGBT Fiction
Age Group: Young Adult
Rating: 5 stars
Purchase: Amazon
Review copy provided by Enchanted Book Promotions in exchange for an honest review.
After a tragic accident devastates his family, 16-year-old Rick St. James starts his junior year of high school without any friends in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. When he meets Kevin Vincent, he’s too distracted by the promise of new friends to see that Kevin has secrets of his own.
Having created an environment where he’s feared and admired by his classmates, Kevin finds pleasure in using his good looks and violence to control and manipulate those around him. Secretly, he cruises the gay club scene, turning tricks to earn money so he can party and get high.
As Rick’s dad becomes increasingly violent and abusive at home, the two form a surprising and volatile trust. In this battle of wills, their precarious friendship will either keep their lives from blowing up around them or possibly light the fuse that will cause the explosion.
Violence Begets… can only be described one way: heartbreaking. It’s hard putting my thoughts into words about this book. Parts of it are very dark and disturbing, and the romance doesn’t even feel like a romance because of how heartbreaking it is.
Let’s start with the characters. Rick St. James had to move after a tragic accident devastated his family, and now he’s in a new school without any friends, far, far away from home. Rick is a lost soul in every way of the word. His home doesn’t feel like a home. His father becomes increasingly abusive, and Rick is left to suffer the consequences of his father’s violence on his own, with no one to protect him.
Kevin Vincent loves manipulating and controlling people around him. He’s narcisstic, and it’s first, it’s hard to like him. But the more I got to know him, his dark secrets, how he’s a closeted gay, how unfairly life has been to him too.
Kevin and Rick’s friendship starts out as some sort of game of control and manipulation. Neither of them has any power at home, or even over their own lives, so they try to establish power any way they can and anywhere they can. But the two of them, both broken and bruisedand let down by society and the poeple who ought to love them, grow closer, it makes things more complicated than maybe even they can handle.
Told from the POV of both of these boys, you get a well-developed story offering a full perspective on making choices: giving up or going on, becoming one’s father or turning away from violence. It’s an emotional, raw, heartbreaking read. Deep stuff though, definitely not some light reading.
If you don’t mind a book that will set your emotions all over the place, or that might turn you into a crying heap, then I would highly recommend this one. Reading this book is a mind-opening experience.
