Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

I am a good guy.

Keir Sarafian may not know much, but he knows himself. And the one thing he knows about himself is that he is a good guy. A guy who's a devoted son and brother, a loyal friend, and a reliable teammate. And maybe most important of all, a guy who understands that when a girl says no, she means it. But that is not what Gigi Boudakian, childhood friend and Keir's lifelong love, says he is. What Gigi says he is seems impossible to Keir....It is something inexcusable — the worst thing he can imagine, the very opposite of everything he wants to be.

As Keir recalls the events leading up to his fateful night with Gigi, he realizes that the way things look are definitely not the way they really are — and that it may be all too easy for a good guy to do something terribly wrong.

 

I finished reading this book at least a month ago and I am still confused because of the unreliable narrator. Inexcusable was really something else. I loved it, I really did- I read it in one sitting and it has pushed Chris Lynch up on my list of favorite authors.

I think the unreliable narrator adds a lot to the story because for awhile, I honestly believed that Keir was a good guy who hadn’t done what he was accused of. Little by little as we learn more about his past and his family, the story unfolds. Keir isn’t what he seems to be.

I’ve read plenty of YA books dealing with the topic of rape and each one of them was even more memorable than the last. Inexcusable took YA books about rape to a whole new level. Instead of hearing the story from the point of view of the victim, we hear it from the point of view of the person who committed the crime. One of the most important things about this book (in my opinion) is that it teaches us that everything is not what it seems.

I think my only complaint about it was that Keir kept calling Gigi by her full name. So instead of just saying GiGi, he said Gigi Boudakian every single time. If he said her name a few times a chapter, I wouldn’t mind. But this was multiple times on every page.

Besides that, I really liked reading Inexcusable. I’m not going to say it was refreshing because it really wasn’t- it was jaw-dropping, raw, and tricky as can be.

FTC- Library.