Until It Hurts to Stop by Jennifer R. Hubbard (review)

Four years after being the target of perpetual harassment and bullying in seventh grade, Maggie seems to have to gotten it together; she may not be welcome at the popular table, but she’s got her own friends, and she finds peace and empowerment when she and her best friend, Nick, go hiking together on weekends. Just when things seem to have settled, though, the return to school of her head tormentor, Raleigh, sends Maggie into a tailspin of memory-laced paranoia, and an awkward kiss with Nick leaves her reeling, so that even the rush she gets from hiking is tainted. Hubbard effectively plays her metaphors close to the surface here: Maggie’s painful past is the mountain she has to climb, and the rattlesnake she and Nick encounter is the anger and resentment that lie coiled inside her, waiting to strike. The insults and torture she endured at the hands of Raleigh and company have plausibly left her with a shaming inner voice that threatens her self-esteem and cocoons her into a self-protective shell that shuts out other people, not only when she needs them, but when they need her. When she recognizes how Nick struggles with the same problem, internalizing his father’s verbal abuse, the parallels to her own situation finally bring her perspective. If her self-involvement is a bit obvious, well, it might just need to be to make it clear to readers that being victimized can have damaging effects long after the abuse stops; Hubbard shows, with profound psychological insight, how Maggie’s recognizing in Nick what she can’t see in herself is a first step toward really putting her junior high past to rest. Readers will similarly see themselves in Maggie and, hopefully, stop punishing themselves with their own legacies of bullying.