Reading progress update: I've read 39 out of 288 pages.
This might be a DNF. They've moved the kid to the middle of nowhere Montana against his will--which sure he's a 17-year-old and when parents decided to move that's just that. But we're dealing homophobes and abusive behaviours. Ben, the teenage protagonist is being hit and now starved and thrown out but the mother of his "stepdad" and his father is just, "Cool."
I get that things are done 'differently' there, and she's from a different time or whatever lame excuse you want to put on it--even the, "We're a guest in her home," excuse, but I'll be damned if I allow ANYONE to lay a hand on my kid I don't care if it's your house or how "disrespectful" you believe them to be. Just no! I may try to finish the chapter, but the kid has been hit, denied dinner and kicked out of the house to stay in the woodshed until she decides he can come back inside and dad is just going with it. This is a mess. Normally I'd keep reading with a sick fascination wonder just how hot-messy it can get, but this is just...nah.
