A Book Review
“The Knockout Queen” by Rufi Thorpe
A brutal, yet darkly funny exploration of identity and friendship.
The “problem” with reading and reviewing close to 200 books a year is that the bar for a great book is pretty high. I’m not usually impressed with buzzy best-sellers. It takes something truly extraordinary, and a super talented writer, to knock my socks off, and The Knockout Queen does exactly that.
I went into this book with no real expectations. I hadn’t even fully read the blurb. It was highly recommended to me by a friend who shares my reading tastes; if he’s raving about it, I’ll like it, so I dove right in.
Bunny is “the queen of North Shore.” She’s a tall, blonde, volleyball star with a rich father and a pool in her backyard. Michael moves next door with his aunt and cousin after his mother goes to jail. It’s a cramped, modest house that never feels like home to him. When Bunny catches Michael smoking in her backyard one evening, he is quickly drawn into her life, and it becomes clear things are not as perfect as they appeared from the outside.
