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I’m always on the lookout for a good road trip book, especially during those hot summer months, and so, I was beyond delighted to run across Julia Lynn Rubin’s Trouble Girls, part YA thriller and part coming of age story. It features teenaged best friends who head out for a weekend camping trip and end up on the run from the law. A little over the top to be sure, but the synopsis totally hooked me.
Trixie’s life isn’t anything like she always imagined it would be. She’s seventeen, working way too many hours at a local diner, and doing her best to care for her ailing mother. She’s put most of her dreams aside to make sure her mother gets what she needs, and in a lot of ways, she’s simply going through the motions of living.
The one bright spot in her life is her friendship with Lux. Sure, Trixie would love it if she and Lux could be something more than friends, but she’s not sure if Lux would be open to that. For now, they’re best friends, and Trixie is beyond grateful for Lux’s presence in her life.
One Friday evening, Trixie and Lux decide to go camping for the weekend. It’ll give Trixie a chance to decompress, to let her hair down and be a normal teenager for once. Trixie wonders if this might be just the chance she needs to let Lux know she has a huge crush on her, but even if she doesn’t confess her true feelings, she knows they’ll have a good time just like always.
As you might imagine, things don’t go as planned. The girls decide to head into a nearby town before roughing it in the woods. Lux wants them to test out their fake ID’s, and she knows just the place to do it. Trixie isn’t nuts about the idea of spending time in a crowded club environment, but she eventually gives in. Not long after they arrive, a college student sexually assaults Lux, and Trixie stabs him in an attempt to defend her friend.
Now, Lux and Trixie are on the run. They know heading home is likely to mean jail time for Trixie, so they decide to head for California where they can start fresh. Trixie hates the thought of abandoning her mother, but she hates the thought of jail even more. She keeps telling herself she’ll eventually find a way to make sure her mom gets the care she needs, even if it takes awhile for everything to fall into place.
Trixie and Lux are not at all prepared for a life on the run. They’re not very street smart, and their good judgement is sorely lacking at times. Everything they do seems to end in greater disaster, and I found myself feeling overwhelmed on their behalf. And yet, I couldn’t look away from this book. Something about Rubin’s writing compelled me to keep turning the pages.
If you’re sensitive to descriptions of sexual assault, this may not be the book for you. Rubin doesn’t go into graphic detail about Lux’s assault, but it is one of the main forces driving the novel forward, and it’s mentioned relatively often. I thought she did a fantastic job depicting the various emotions survivors deal with on a daily basis without overdramatizing a potentially triggering situation.
My main problem with this book has to do with the ending which feels a little too ambiguous for my taste. I don’t need every single detail tied up in a tidy bow, but it’s nice to finish a book with a feeling of at least a partial resolution for the characters. Here, the author hints at what might happen to the girls, but I didn’t feel any real closure. It was almost as if she decided to leave it up to the imaginations of her readers, and that particular writing style just doesn’t work for me.
In spite of its unsatisfactory ending, there’s a lot to love about Trouble Girls. The action is practically nonstop, and I became quite invested in both Trixie and Lux. It’s a quick, diverting read, perfect for a summer afternoon on the beach or even a cool autumn night by a campfire.
