The vast majority of why I read something is for a good writing style. Brutes feels sticky and sweat-stained and sun-bleached, and every description felt like something new and visceral. I’m not someone who gets unable to put down a book, but this would make me go between almost hypnotized and needing to put it down and stare at a wall. Some of my favorite sections were the lists of anecdotes from the girls, times that they were called brutes and times that they had been touched (and I think there was another?), because each one is so specific and personal, and I feel like I can imagine the story surrounding each one.

If Brutes gets translated into languages with inclusive vs. exclusive “we,” I hope it uses inclusive (including the reader in that “we”) because I was so entirely sucked into the minds of these girls (no matter how uncanny and cruel they could be) that I felt myself caring about whatever they cared about. I, a lesbian, found myself completely and entirely enraptured by the Lake Boy. I felt myself desperate for Leila to let them back in when Mia was leading her around, and when they were alone, it scared me.

The switch to “I” literally made my stomach drop. I can’t even convey how uncomfortable and skin-crawling and terrifying that was. I’m not sure if I missed who it was that got left behind or if it was intentionally left unclear, but either way, that whole scene felt disgusting and was executed perfectly

For the individual chapters, I felt like I wasn’t going to like them because Hazel’s didn’t do it for me, and then the way Brittney talked about the dark and how she does dangerous things to see if she can get away with it was exactly what I wanted. I wonder if Jody’s chapter at the end signifies that it was her left alone with Stone because she was forced and reshaped into something older with more power and ability than a 13 year old does, so she’s put at the same level as all the other individual chapters.

I love how details of the ending slowly unfold, the Lake Monster in Hazels chapter, the thigh mark in Brittney’s, the reveal early on that the brutes know where Sammy is. Nearly everything about the Lake Monster and the Lake Boy was absolutely fascinating to me, and the reveal of Sammy being involved with the Lake Boy was a fun shock.

I don’t think the ending is about men really. Aside from Eddie and debatably Christian (honorary girl), men are not treated as characters in their own right but things that happen to women.

The Lake Monster is one of the Brutes. They seem to have a kinship with it, urging it to just close its eyes, knowing it’s dead. It is a beast that’s born from and poisoned by Falls Landing that had no chance of ever recovering from what that town has done to it.

And suddenly it’s alone with a man with a knife that splits it open, blames it for something it couldn’t have possibly done.

The Brutes think that Sammy should have gotten to burn her old self down instead of the Lake Boy, and then the Lake Monster/Brute burns its Lake for what it did to it, to all of them.

I think the leech was representative of Falls Landing. It crawled inside of Sammy and bled her dry until she was able to get out of there.