Rites Of Passage.

☆☆☆☆☆

rites of passage.

joy n.hensley

Publisher: Harper Teen.

Publication Date:September 9,2014

Genre:YA Contemporary Romance|Suspense

Format|Pages:Hardcover|416

Source: Goodreads|Library.

Sam McKenna’s never turned down a dare. And she's not going to start with the last one her brother gave her before he died. 

So Sam joins the first-ever class of girls at the prestigious Denmark Military Academy. She’s expecting push-ups and long runs, rope climbing and mud-crawling. As a military brat, she can handle an obstacle course just as well as the boys. She's even expecting the hostility she gets from some of the cadets who don’t think girls belong there. What she’s not expecting is her fiery attraction to her drill sergeant. But dating is strictly forbidden and Sam won't risk her future, or the dare, on something so petty...no matter how much she wants him. 

As Sam struggles to prove herself, she discovers that some of the boys don’t just want her gone—they will stop at nothing to drive her out. When their petty threats turn to brutal hazing, bleeding into every corner of her life, she realizes they are not acting alone. A decades-old secret society is alive and active… and determined to force her out. 

At any cost. 

Now time's running short. Sam must decide who she can trust...and choosing the wrong person could have deadly consequences.

✈ ✈

  Suspense, Action, Survival, Military, forbidden romance. Rites Of Passage had all of those, a type of book that I love. The novel wasn’t any different. I fell in love with it right from start. Most of my families were in military and couple good friends of mine. I had always enjoyed novels like these and I have read few that were military based. When I saw that this was military based and fact that she went to military school for dare, had my interest right away. It ended up being even better that I imagined it to be. It was an unexpected, unlike the story that I expected to be. First it was based in military school, second it focused a lot of survival, since Sam was one of first class of females in Denmark Military Academy. Rites Of Passage is a type of book that has you go through emotions all the way through. How can you not in a novel like this one? It deals with quite bit violence and of course action. Plus the descrptions of everything they went through, the training, hell week and everything in between is intense. Reading it, you can’t help but wonder: Who will make it? Will they succeed? Those were my thoughts. I got so into book that even days I was worn out after work, I found myself reading before bed because I wanted to find out what happens. Not what I expected it. Rite of Passage was a book I thought about after reaching the end. 


Loved Sam from the start. It takes a lot to face what Sam did. I wouldn’t last a second in military school, I would lost it, left at the first time someone yelled at me. Sam had the courage, a lot of it. She was strong and despite what happened, what others put her through, especially Matthews and how her brother treated her, she kept on going. She wouldn’t give up till it got resolved. Now that takes a lot. Considering that she almost got killed more than once, her father going MIA, missing her older brother, Amos. All of those is hard enough for one person to deal with, I don’t even know how she managed to not give up. I would have. I do believe that having her drill sergeant, Stamm on her side helped her through it all. He helped her through so much, and one of the guys that didn’t actually tried do anything to make her quit, he did the opposite. Loved the scenes between two of them, it sucks that no mattered what happened, they still couldn’t be together. That would be hard on anyone and considering how much they went through. The way they parted, made me sad probably as much as it hurt them. I hoped that they would found a way to be together. However that what made the book more realistic than ones I read before. 


I try not to dislike characters but sometimes it hard not to. I disliked Matthews from the moment he appeared in the book, how he tried to make her quit from day one. Even if he wasn’t the only one attempting to make her quit, there was something off about him. Something that I disliked about him, and it seemed like he was mostly conctrating on making Sam quit more than others. There were multiple times that I wanted to punch him. I hoped that he would get caught and kicked out, but of course that didn’t happen and I had feeling that his father had something to do with that. Now Jonathan, I was angry with him too. How could he treat his own sister like that? Once I did find a reason behind and they had their brother/ sister moment it was hard to dislike him, I actually was smiling. He was trying protecting her. Rites Of Passage had always something going one, there wasn’t one dull moment. If I could give it more than five stars. I would. 


Rites Of Passage will have you on edge of your seat. Even after you will wonder what could happen next. You won’t be able to get the book, the story out of your mind. A mind-blowing debut.