‘If some­one hurts your sis­ter and you’re any kind of man, you seek revenge, right? If your brother’s been accused of a ter­ri­ble crime and you’re the main wit­ness, then you ban­ish all doubt and defend him. Isn’t that what fam­i­lies do? When Mikey’s sis­ter claims a boy assaulted her at a party, his world of work and girls begins to fall apart. When Ellie’s brother is charged with the crime, but says he didn’t do it, her world of revi­sion, exams and fit­ting in at a new school begins to unravel. When Mikey and Ellie meet, two worlds col­lide. Brave and unflinch­ing, this is a novel of extra­or­di­nary skill­ful­ness and almost unbear­able ten­sion. It’s a book about loy­alty and the choices that come with it. But above all it’s a book about love.’

You Against Me is a pow­er­ful and mov­ing story. I’ve been want­ing to read this for ages and I’m very glad I finally did. 

I went into this not know­ing very much about it — and I think that is prob­a­bly best for a book like this. You don’t need to know much more than is on the cover. As it’s almost impos­si­ble to write a review about You Against Me with­out giv­ing too much away, I’m going to keep this one rel­a­tively short.

You Against Me is very much a char­ac­ter dri­ven book — and Downham’s char­ac­ters, every sin­gle one, are excep­tion­ally well writ­ten. This isn’t a romance, but it is about love. Yes — Mikey and Ellie are drawn to one another and we see their rela­tion­ship evolve through­out the story, but that isn’t what You Against Me is pri­mar­ily about. You Against Me is about an alleged sex­ual assault. One person’s word against another. And the dev­as­tat­ing effects on not only the vic­tim and their fam­ily, but also on the accused fam­ily — a point of view we rarely con­sider, or hear much about. In sit­u­a­tions such as this, no one tends to care very much, if at all, of the impact of an alle­ga­tion on the accuser’s fam­ily and how they are left to cope with the after­math. Down­ham shows us how both fam­i­lies are com­pletely torn apart.

The nar­ra­tion is sim­ple yet pow­er­ful. I was quickly caught up in the book and my emo­tions were all over the place while read­ing. I felt revul­sion, fear, anger, pity, com­pas­sion, and not nec­es­sar­ily for the char­ac­ters you would expect either. That is where You Against Me shines, there is no out­right evil vil­lain here to hate. Even char­ac­ters whose actions were utterly deplorable, I still found myself moved for them at some point dur­ing the book (well — except per­haps one, and no, it wasn’t the accused).

You Against Me clev­erly keeps the reader guess­ing as to who exactly is telling the truth for a good por­tion of the book — though the clues are there for those who see them. Down­ham tack­les many of the pre-conceptions, atti­tudes, and excuses sur­round­ing rape. ‘Why didn’t she imme­di­ately report it to the police? Why didn’t she fight him off?’ (As if it only counts as rape if the woman is beaten beyond recog­ni­tion) ‘She was dressed in reveal­ing clothes and was drink­ing too much. She was ask­ing for it.’. As if a young woman show­ing any signs of sex­u­al­ity means it is her fault if she assaulted. ‘She should get over it already’ — when a vic­tim of sex­ual assault doesn’t imme­di­ately recover within a few weeks. Sadly, these reac­tions are all to common-place in the real world. Too often there is a blame the vic­tim men­tal­ity when it comes to rape. Down­ham explores all these atti­tudes and more — but never is it more force­fully high­lighted than through Ellie’s father. Or when it is made abun­dantly clear that two char­ac­ters, because of their sex, will be made out to be liars and sluts in court to dis­credit their state­ments. Some­how I very much doubt the accuser’s char­ac­ter and integrity will be judged based on his gen­der and sex­ual history.

I won’t go into detail about indi­vid­ual char­ac­ters, except to say that while all were well-fleshed out, Ellie was prob­a­bly the most com­plex; and how I felt about her altered dras­ti­cally back and forth through­out the story. Per­haps strangely, the char­ac­ter I loved the most was actu­ally her mother, who dis­plays a true courage and strength.

Down­ham is to be applauded for tack­ling such a dif­fi­cult sub­ject and doing so in an insight­ful, hon­est and respect­ful way. You Against Me gives an in-depth and uncom­fort­able exam­i­na­tion into rape and the dev­as­ta­tion it causes not just to the vic­tim but to the fam­i­lies involved. It’s a lit­tle slow to begin with, but really comes into its own in the sec­ond half. Some read­ers will have a prob­lem with the end­ing. It is a lit­tle abrupt and in some ways unsat­is­fy­ing — though I can see why Down­ham has left it as she has. The ulti­mate out­come of the court case is, in many ways, irrel­e­vant and I per­son­ally think it’s obvi­ous which way it’s going to go any­way. Instead, Down­ham leaves us to draw our own con­clu­sions and pro­vides a dif­fer­ent sort of clo­sure — one more to do with the growth of the char­ac­ters and their own accep­tance (or not, as the case may be) with every­thing that has happened.

This won’t be the right kind of novel for every­one, but don’t let the sub­ject mat­ter turn you away from pick­ing up this book — despite its dark moments it is never melo­dra­matic or emo­tion­ally manip­u­la­tive. You Against Me man­ages to be both an absorb­ing, poignant read while con­vey­ing some impor­tant mes­sages. One that deserves reading.

‘You want this to be a love story?”

~ page 144

Rec­om­mended Read­ing Age: 16+

Rat­ing: 8/10