Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E.K. Johnston

“I love you,” Polly says suddenly when I’m almost to the door. “I know.” I say.

Hermione Winters has been a flyer. She’s been captain of her cheerleading team. The envied girlfriend and the undisputed queen of her school. Now it’s her last year and those days and those labels are fading fast. In a few months she’ll be a different person. She thinks she’s ready for whatever comes next. But then someone puts something in her drink at a party, and in an instant she finds herself wearing new labels m ones she never imagined: Victim. Survivor. That raped girl. Even though this was never the future she imagined, one essential thing remains unchanged: Hermione can still call herself Polly Oliver’s best friend, and that may be the truest label of all. Heartbreaking and empowering, Exit, Pursued by a Bear is the story of transcendent friendship in the face of trauma.

“I love you,” I say, because I really, really do. “I know,” says Polly.

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I read Exit, Pursued by a Bear during an airport layover in Houston; I’d been offered a voucher for being kicked off an overbooked flight (which I always take) and so had roughly seven hours to kill in the airport. Luckily, this book captured my attention for just about the entire time.

I’d always heard fantastic things about this book. It’s one of those library picks that’s been floating around the ether for a while—an award winner, a stunner, something quiet and arresting. That being said, I wasn’t expecting to love it quite as much as I did. The premise (girl being attacked, girl dealing with aftermath) has been done before, although this book is hailed as an original similar to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

The contemporary YA pick follows a teenager in Canada headed off to cheer camp with her classmates; partway through the week, they discover her half-clothed by the lake, clearly drugged and assaulted. The resulting story flashes through her days in the hospital, the public reception of her (very public) assault, and the year’s impact on her. Hard scenes include going to the hospital to get tested for STDs and pregnancy, dealing with dating, etc,. afterwards, and navigating the new label of “survivor” rather than just “Hermione.”

The description is right in that a lot of the book actually focuses on her community’s support, which is lovely to read if verging on optimistic. Friends’ uncertainty of how to handle her (kids’ gloves? Like normal?) felt realistic, and for the most part, people rallied to support.

A lot of similar books can fall down the “life falls apart” rabbit hole which I’m sure is realistic too, while this one was more about how the incident is absorbed into the cadence of her life and dealt with from then on. For example, one particularly compelling plot point was how hungry the assigned detective is to find out what happens, and the confusing guilt of this being “the case that makes her”—and Hermione herself being aware that she is an (unintentional) pawn in building others’ careers off of trauma.

The book had a gentle voice in many ways, and it did have an appealing, quiet strength. The highs were transcendent, pulling together the threads of the story in a satisfying way too. It smoothes over a lot of friction, which will appeal to some (“there’s no right way to handle something like this”) and offend others (“feels too fluffy for something like this.”)

Personally, I read it as a nice in-between showing the real harm and trauma of Hermione’s rape balanced with the mitigating effects of having a really tuned in, practically perfect support system. Some readers on review sites also saw this book as heartbreaking because it shows how devastating an event like this could be even when nothing beyond the event—professionalism, family, doubt, community, personal ability to hold it together—really goes wrong.

Overall, Exit, Pursued by a Bear had a feel similar to Moonglass by Jessi Kirby—one of my favorite books. It’s poignant and a little quiet, but affecting. I loved my few hours spent tearing through it.

PS. I absolutely love this cover.