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Brutes

by Dizz Tate

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The Virgin Suicides meets The Florida Project in this wildly original debut—a coming-of-age story about the crucible of girlhood, from a writer of rare and startling talent We would not be born out of sweetness, we were born out of rage, we felt it in our bones. In Falls Landing, Florida—a place built of theme parks, swampy lakes, and scorched bougainvillea flowers—something sinister lurks in the deep. A gang of thirteen-year-old girls obsessively orbit around the local preacher's daughter, Sammy. She is mesmerizing, older, and in love with Eddie. But suddenly, Sammy goes missing. Where is she? Watching from a distance, they edge ever closer to discovering a dark secret about their fame-hungry town and the cruel cost of a ticket out.…

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"On the first page of Dizz Tate’s debut novel, a 14-year-old girl has gone missing from Falls Landing, Florida, where screams from nearby theme parks ripple through the air. Instead of focusing on the missing girl, Tate makes the far more compelling choice to zoom in on her pack of 13-year-old friends who are used to blending into the background – and who know far more than the town’s adults. In plunging the reader into the girls’ collective perspective, Brutes makes for an original and stylistically ambitious take on the well-trodden subject matter of girls in peril."
NPR Books We Love — 2023 · apps.npr.org