Release by Patrick Ness (2017)

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Adam’s dad is the head of the church in his small, conservative town, which means he’s under constant scrutiny. His brother’s on his way to become a priest, but Adam can’t even think about the future. He’s still got one last year of high school, a hard enough feat without being gay. His parents seem to know about his sexuality but ignore it, he has a boyfriend that he thinks he loves, and a boss that’s sexually harassing him at work. Everyday stretches out to a lifetime in Adam’s world, and today is no different.
I have mixed feelings about Patrick Ness’s work. Overall, he always has really good concepts for his books. He wrote a trilogy about a world where everyone hears each other’s thoughts and a book about all the sidekicks of superheroes. Yet, they all fall short for me. I was still drawn to Release because of the plot, the cover, and the quote from Andrew Smith on the front. After reading it, this could’ve been one of my favorite books of the year but there was one major issue.
Release is said to be the modern day version of Forever by Judy Blume. I’m sad to say I’ve never read Forever, but that this book did have a profound discussion surrounding sexuality. First of all, there’s actual conversation around sex between Adam and his best friend, Angela. I think a problem with teenage sexuality is that it’s not talked about enough and it was really great to see them talk honestly about it. Also, there were real sex scenes. In YA particularly, I think not enough authors include realistic sex scenes in their book, so it was really awesome for Patrick Ness to both show was consensual and non-consensual sex looks like.
The being said, there is some pretty tough scenes in this book concerning sexual harassment. Adam is constantly being harassed by his boss, who goes as far as threatening Adam the loss of his job unless he performs certain acts for him. The scenes are extremely uncomfortable to read, but because of that successfully portray how problematic sexual harassment is in the workplace. Another thing about this story that is specifically important is that it shows that this situation can happen to boys and men. His gender also doesn’t shield him from getting victim blamed by his father, an extremely frustrating part of the story.
Concerning Adam’s story, this book definitely deserved 5 stars from me. However, another story was put in this book that I couldn’t stand. The side story follows the ghost of a girl who was recently murdered in Adam’s town, which could’ve been okay, except the stories never connected in the end. There were just these random slots of paranormal storyline in an overall contemporary story.
Ultimately, I ended up struggling with Release because of the paranormal aspects. However, that doesn’t change the superb portrayal of sexuality in this book. With that, I would recommend this book for older teenage audiences so that the full message of this book can be received.

3 Stars

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