Tonight We Rule the World By Zack Smedley

Zack Smedley æ 9 read & download

From the critically acclaimed author of Deposing Nathan comes an explosive examination of identity, voice, and the indelible ways our stories are rewritten by others.

In the beginning, Owen’s story was blank . . . then he was befriended by Lily, the aspiring author who helped him find his voice. Together, the two have spent years navigating first love and amassing an inseparable friend group. But all of it is upended one day when his school’s administration learns Owen’s secret: that he was sexually assaulted by a classmate.

In the ensuing investigation, everyone scrambles to hold their worlds together.

Owen, still wrestling with his self-destructive thoughts and choices.

His father, a mission-driven military vet ready to start a war to find his son’s attacker.

The school bureaucrats, who seem most concerned with kowtowing to the local media attention.

And Lily, who can’t learn that Owen is the mystery victim everyone is talking about . . . because once she does, it will set off a chain of events that will change their lives forever.

Heartbreaking and hopeful, this is a coming-of-age story that explores how we rebuild after the world comes crumbling down. Tonight We Rule the World

Hopefully the worst thing about this is that it was written in 2020. Let's never do that again, man. English

My first day of high school began with a mandatory icebreaker and ended with me getting hit by a Ford F-250 pickup truck. In the grand scheme of things, it’s difficult to say which experience was worse.

Hands up if you're rapidly becoming a Zack Smedley fan 🙋‍♀️

Tonight We Rule the World, like the author's debut-- Deposing Nathan --is a great YA contemporary. Both take on important subjects, but with flawed multifaceted characters and a sense of humour. I might like Deposing Nathan slightly better, but this is a close second and arguably the more important book.

I should say right now that this book is about sexual assault and Owen relives that trauma in quite graphic detail, and it also deals with PTSD and coming out as bisexual. However, few books deal with this specific issue. In fact, right now I can't think of any. It is very effective.

Like Nate and Cam in Deposing Nathan, Owen is a well-drawn and deeply sympathetic character. His story parallels that of his father, both of them having buried trauma in the hope that ignoring it will make things eventually go away. For his dad, who is ex-military, it's war that haunts him. The book is about them both, their relationship, and their demons. Owen's father adds a wonderful side character and an important subplot to the novel. He's this big, aggressive military man whose response to his son coming out as bi is: Fuck do I care? Use condoms.

The narrative is nonlinear, moving smoothly between the past and present until we are presented with the full picture. Owen experiences an additional challenge because he is on the autism spectrum, which makes some of the gaslighting and manipulation he faces especially awful when his own lack of social understanding is intentionally used against him.

It's not all grim. Supportive friends and funny family dynamics keep the story from being too depressing.

“Sometimes I think he’s a sociopath,” I say.
“No, sweetheart, he’s your dad.”
“That’s not the opposite of a sociopath.”

I'll be watching out for whatever Smedley writes next. English why start building up your walls now, a whole year before the release, when you know that an author will tear them down with each and every hard-hitting, ruthless and emotionally loaded word anyway?

Few writers are as talented as Zack Smedley. English Messy. Devastating. Ugly. Incredibly important!! Remember Deposing Nathan? Zack Smedley did it again. He destroyed me in every possible way!

When I started reading, I felt fidgety, and I was scrolling back and forth, trying to guess the plot twists in advance … because, well, yeah, I had Deposing Nathan on my mind. And it was like I was too hyper to read my most anticipated book of 2021 … Slowly, I started reading instead of almost hyperventilating and guessing and second-guessing. And suddenly, I found myself on the edge of my seat, but I still wasn’t sure if Tonight We Rule the World was as brilliant as Deposing Nathan or if I wanted it to be as brilliant. And then there was Owen’s driving lesson, and I exhaled and calmed down. From that point on, I drowned myself in the story and didn’t care if I never surfaced again.

When it was revealed what exactly happened to Owen, my ugly first hunch turned out to be correct. I was so mad and wanted to scream and shout, and write down every single word that bubbled up in me, one word in particular, in capitals, but I can’t use that word here because of spoilers. After that, I found some parts really, really hard to read, and they made my heart thunder in my throat, my stomach churn, and tears spring to my eyes. I clenched my fists more than once, and I sobbed, and I wanted to yell at those pages: NO, NO, NO! NOOOO!

I love how Zack pulled me in with his simple and blunt writing, his compelling and vivid dialogues, perfectly matching every character. The way he sets the pace, slower in the first half and getting more and more frantic in the second half. Be prepared for that second half. It probably rips your heart out of your body and shreds it into a million pieces. I couldn’t stop crying while reading the last chapters. I wanted to hug one character besides Owen so badly; those who already read the book know who I’m referring to. And please think twice about picking this up if you’ve ever been sexually assaulted or manipulated.

Thank you, Zack, for addressing these incredibly heavy and important topics. This book needs to be available in every school library worldwide and discussed in every classroom!! I still have goosebumps on my body while writing this …

Follow me on Instagram English Zack Smedley's new YA novel (following Deposing Nathan) was so good but so heartbreaking.

For the longest time, Owen had trouble fitting in. Being on the autism spectrum, sometimes he struggled with expressing himself and making friends. But when he met Lily, he found in her a kindred spirit and his first girlfriend. And as he connects with her group of friends, he feels like he belongs for the first time.

Senior year in high school is a big one for everyone. Owen finds the courage to admit he’s bisexual. But then the school is rocked when it’s anonymously reported to the administration that Owen was sexually assaulted during a school trip. It’s something he had wanted to keep hidden from everyone—the school, his military-veteran father, who will stop at nothing to uncover the truth, and especially Lily, because everything will change after that. What happened that night? Who assaulted Owen? And why doesn't he want to share the truth?

Tonight We Rule the World is so powerful, emotional, and thought-provoking. It’s a look at gaslighting and how often we’re failed by those who say they have our best interests at heart. But more than that, it’s about finding the inner courage and self-belief to do the right thing and stand on your own. I struggled a bit with the behaviors of some of the characters, but I was just so moved.

Thanks to Page Street YA, Storygram Tours, and Zack Smedley for inviting me on the tour and providing me a complimentary copy of the book in excahnge for an unbiased review!

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.

Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/. English

Received an ARC from the Publisher! Thanks y’all!

Hoo boy, this book. I cannot remember the last time a book made me absolutely bawl like this and I need everyone who can to read it come October. It is a tough book that deals with some dark subjects (sexual assault, emotional abuse, gaslighting, anxiety) but if you’re not gonna be triggered by such content I urge you to read it, because I’m gonna spend a hot minute talking about what this meant to me.

At the risk of getting all philosophical and overly personal in the goodreads comments, here we go.

I was emotionally abused in high school. I’m in a much better place now and honestly I wish I’d had a book like this back then, because the way Owen copes with the emotional abuse he endures and his complicated feelings towards his abuser was at times word for word how I’d felt in high school: how he feels like he has to do everything for his friends because he doesn’t feel like he’s worth them putting the work in? Yeah. How he wonders when someone he adores became someone who hurt him, and how he desperately wishes he could talk to that first person and thank them for all they meant to him in his younger years, but knowing it’s not two separate people and the person who meant so much to him is gone, become someone else he doesn’t recognize? Feelings I still grapple with all these years later. The book also reminded me to be nicer to my past self, I didn’t berate the protagonist for being lied to and gaslit and not knowing how to get out of the situation, I felt for him, I wanted to yell at him to run and give him a hug; shouldn’t I think about my high school self the same way, not look back and kick myself like “stupid girl you had so many outs and you let them hurt you over and over” and that’s a reminder I needed more than I realized because even though things are so much better now, it messed me up, and this book reminded me that I didn’t deserve that, I wasn’t an idiot, no matter how I much I still feel that at times.

So yeah, this is the book I wish I’d had in high school when I was in the middle of all of that, but I’m glad that kids now are gonna have it, because I know if I felt so seen, felt this book was so necessary while I sobbed at one am almost eight years later, there’s gonna be a kid out there who needs it now, and then that’s a lucky kid who’s gonna have the tools to help themselves, I hope. So yeah, if you can get through the triggering content, please read this book come fall. English There’s just something about Zack Smedley’s books where I can’t put them down once I’ve started. Both with Deposing Nathan and this one I had to read them in a single sitting. Tonight We Rule the World covers some heavy subject matter. Owen was sexually assaulted by a classmate on a school trip. When someone anonymously informs the school administration an investigation begins. But Owen doesn’t want anyone to know that he was the one who was assaulted.

The book flashes back and forth between his senior year when the school and his parents start investigating the assault and journal entries he wrote starting his freshman year. It was interesting to see how Owen developed and started relationships and friendships over the years through his journal.

I haven’t read too many books that focus on male victims of rape and sexual assault. But even within the ones that I have read this felt like a different exploration that I haven’t really seen much before. Owen is autistic, and something else that was featured in the book was how some people would exploit the fact that sometimes he didn’t understand social cues or would try to make him feel bad about things that he needed. It was so fucking frustrating and enraging to read, but I think it served an important purpose to show teens unhealthy relationship dynamics.

There’s so much that is covered in this book in just 350 pages. There’s complicated family relationships, abusive relationships, PTSD, Owen coming out as bisexual, growing up, going off to college, and so much more. But the book never felt overloaded or like it was trying to tackle too many different things. Everything felt like it was incorporated into the story for a reason. I can’t wait to see whatever Zack Smedley writes next. English Zack Smedley ripped my heart out with his amazing YA debut, *Deposing Nathan*. Not before that book had I seen a writer traverse bisexual coming-out and coming-of-age, and then to do it with one hand on an unfolding mystery and the other on raw heartbreak. It is a dear novel to me.

So first I must thank Page Street YA for the advanced copy of his follow-up, *Tonight We Rule the World* in exchange for a review. This was one of my most anticipated reads this year, and everyone can start reading it October 5th!

This time Smedley takes a brutal but important look at a sexual assault and its aftermath, experienced by a senior boy named Owen, a couple months before graduating high school and days after coming out bi online.

I appreciate that we now have the word gaslighting in our vernacular to call out the way some individuals will try to twist our truths and negate our feelings and how that can poison and shrink us. Smedley's depiction of gaslighting here is powerful. Like his screenwriting protagonist, Smedley has a way with dialogue; he can draw awkward conversations in a masterful way that can leave my gut in knots---but in knots for only so long. Because his characters also demonstrate incredible agency and learn to have dignity for oneself.

*Tonight We Rule the World* shreds the indifference too many people have toward assault. Its examination of how men in particular handle this and other traumas is also pretty rare and much needed. I'm so grateful that Zack is in the world and keeps writing books for teenagers (and the rest of us).

Ultimately I'd put this at 4.5 stars, but of course I'm rounding up. I'm curious about the title and cover, which I feel don't prepare the reader for the difficult subject matter. But gee, this is an impressive follow-up, and I'll read Smedley for life. English Fantastic in so many ways. Rtc. English A common worry for readers is whether the follow-up to an outstanding debut novel will suffer from the dreaded Second Book Syndrome, where expectations are sky-high but disappointment sets in. We can officially lay such anxieties to rest here because Tonight We Rule the World is a phenomenal follow-up to Zack Smedley's first book, Deposing Nathan.

Like Deposing Nathan, Tonight We Rule the World deals with difficult subjects. Smedley handles them skillfully and sensitively while never detracting from the plot or their importance to readers. Mix in some now-trademark Smedley twists and rich character development, and he's knocked another book out of the park. Highly recommended, but trigger warnings for sexual assault, abuse, and gaslighting.

Smedley will be an automatic read for me from here on out. As an added bonus, I got to meet him and get my copy signed!

English