The Knockout Queen: A novel (Vintage Contemporaries)

I'll never get over how good this book is. It is so smart and so alive and so exquisitely written and so full of empathy and honesty and generosity that I am overwhelmed by it and feel changed by having read it. I will be shoving this into the hands of everyone I know and hopefully into the hands of anyone who reads this review. Please don't miss this book.

4.5 stars rolled up. Friendship is a funny thing—how and when it develops and how it evolves. Throughout the whole book I kept thinking of Bunny (what a name for this gal) as an ROUS—like from The Princess Bride, but a GOUS—girl of unusual size. However we age, we are never quite right and Bunny just couldn’t find her place. Sad, but loving. They had me at the Drag Race reference and never let me go.

It's always so delightful to find a book that, when you're reading it for the first time, you think to yourself, "I can't wait to read this again." I often find myself reading a great book too quickly the first time -- reading for content -- but in subsequent readings, I can slow down and enjoy the lyricism. This is one of those books. So happy to have found the author.

It’s a great book. It’s as brutal as it is kind and as funny as it is tragic, and through the unlikely friendship of two mismatched outsiders, we see that opposite truths can and do exist at the same time. The book is written in the voice of Michael, an alienated gay teenage boy, who must grapple to hold on to love for his friend while hating what she does. I keep thinking about this book and feel that I have learned something fundamental about human relationships. In addition, it was a really great read!

I hadn’t read anything about this book... Only heard a booktuber say it was about a tall girl with a boyfriend who turns out to be gay. So I thought this might be a cute, fun, light-hearted book to read.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. This is a story of two characters who feel different. One being an overly tall, athletic teen girl (Bunny) and the other a gay teen boy (Michael) who end up becoming best friends. Traumatic events strike both these characters that will have lasting effects on both.

I enjoyed this story being told through adult Michael’s eyes and whose life had some very relatable moments for me. That connection really made his character believable. At times though I would get very frustrated at his attitude toward certain people like Bunny’s father, Ray. Yes, Ray may have been a snake in the real estate world and did some shady things behind Bunny’s back, but he took Michael in when he had nowhere to go and basically treated him like a son. And I was also upset how he let Bunny down later in the story. I basically felt like he was a little overly judgemental when he wasn’t exactly making all the right choices himself. But then again he was a teen and that’s how teens are.

In the end I really felt the most sorry for Bunny whose life does not turn out the way one would think when first starting to read. But I thought the ending was quite beautiful... For that one moment things were how they were supposed to be.

Rufi Thorpe’s, “The Knockout Queen”, is a compelling, heartbreaking, yet ultimately hopeful coming of age/loss of innocence story.

Bunny is well over six feet tall, strong, athletic, rich, and yearning for a boyfriend. Her best friend, Michael, is gay, poor, and worried about Bunny. Both are being raised in non-traditional households. They form a fierce and insular friendship to navigate high school.

Narrated with incredible insight and wisdom by adult Michael, as he looks back on their high school days, trying to make sense of their tragic actions and decisions. Michael helps us understand the complexities of loving someone who makes bad decisions and is not always “good”.

Themes of violence abound in this novel. Bunny is a female who is bigger and stronger than most men. What is it like to be a woman with such physical power? What decisions might a woman make if she possessed that kind of power?