Tradition

By: Brendan Kiely

Narrated by: Alex McKenna, Robbie Daymond

From New York Times best-selling and award-winning author Brendan Kiely, a stunning new novel that explores the insidious nature of tradition at a prestigious boarding school.

Prestigious. Powerful. Privileged. This is Fullbrook Academy, an elite prep school where history looms in the leafy branches over its brick walkways. But some traditions upheld in its hallowed halls are profoundly dangerous.

Jules Devereux just wants to keep her head down, avoid distractions, and get into the right college, so she can leave Fullbrook and its old-boy social codes behind. She wants freedom, but ex-boyfriends and ex-best friends are determined to keep her in place.

Jamie Baxter feels like an imposter at Fullbrook, but the hockey scholarship that got him in has given him a chance to escape his past and fulfill the dreams of his parents and coaches, whose mantra rings in his ears: Don't disappoint us.

When Jamie and Jules meet, they recognize in each other a similar instinct for survival, but at a school where girls in the student handbook are rated by their looks, athletes stack hockey pucks in dorm room windows like notches on a bedpost, and school-sponsored dances push first-year girls out into the night with senior boys, the stakes for safe sex, real love, and true friendship couldn't be higher.

As Jules and Jamie's lives intertwine, and the pressures to play by the rules and remain silent about the school's secrets intensify, they see Fullbrook for what it really is. That tradition, a word Fullbrook hides behind, can be ugly, even violent. Ultimately, Jules and Jamie are faced with the difficult question: can they stand together against classmates - and an institution - who believe they can do no wrong?

©2018 Brendan Kiely (P)2018 Listening Library

A Must Read

Powerful, a must read! Long overdue issues that needed to be brought to light and this book is the perfect vehicle for those discussions to take place!

Excellent narrators

Good story line. Sadly, very true. Enjoyed listening to the two narrators. Their voices were excellent.

In your face issues

1.5 STARS bumped up to 2 for trying.

TRADITION checks all the boxes for books I usually love.

Boarding school? Check
Sexual assault and recovery? Check
Calling out toxic masculinity? Check

Here’s the BUT: but I not only didn’t love the story, I didn’t even like it.

Some men write women so well, I don’t know their gender. Brendan Kiely isn’t one of those writers, at least not in TRADITION.

TRADITION is a book that means very well. It’s an important story executed in too heavy handed a way to feel authentic.

We’re introduced to Jules, a feminist with an attitude that’s more important to her than her message. She wants to hand out pamphlets about a girl/woman’s clinic on freshman move in day. Instead of presenting the info in a way not to alienate nervous parents, she’s in your face. Later, a teacher asks her to put away a tampon and she starts a campaign to put tampons on everyone’s desk. Yeah a man wrote this.

Jamie, the new guy in school we know is going to be The Boy Who Gets It, because he’s wounded and has secrets and joins in the campaign. I hope his character is a role model for boys reading the book, though I suspect if boys do read TRADITION, they already do the right thing. Those who don’t won’t read this type book.

The tone Kiely’s writing misses on the emotion. I’m sure a lot of readers will enjoy TRADITION, but I’m not one of them,