Olivia Cole's voice as Alicia, a teenage girl grappling with the trauma of sexual abuse, is bone-chillingly powerful and effective. The words drips with fatigue, fatigue from helplessness, from the world that only sees you as one thing, from the wolves at your door that only want to eat and dominate. The book does hurt, but it's a very real hurt that some people never even understand a fraction of. Dear Medusa doesn't waste time on niceties, it doesn't treat its hard topics as delicate things to be handled lightly, it punches hard because it needs to be heard. I always enjoy books that effortlessly translate the emotions of the characters into its readers and this book achieves this in spades. I've been fortunate to not have gone through Alicia's situation, but I know it's so so important to have this story out there for those that have.

Despite its rough moments, there is beauty in this book, the beauty of survival, of finding your peers, of connecting and finding commonality through shared injustices.