You are on the precipice of womanhood and have become obsessed with an ex-convict, Roman. She introduces you to the dangerous and honest side of life that no one else has been able to. As she unapologetically places you in scandalous situations, you begin making self-destructive decisions. Depending on which decisions you choose, you may taste Roman’s blood, get branded with a searing screwdriver, or date a married man – all while each choice challenges what it means to be a woman, real, or both.
In this interactive novel, readers have twenty-four possible pathways with four unique endings to explore the wild that is growing up girl.
Raising Women is undeniably candid in how it mirrors the hoops girls jump through to bargain their place in society. Waite illuminates the desperate craving they have for belonging in a culture that is quick to cast them as pawns on a chessboard.
Author's note: While, as a whole, Raising Women is the length of a novel, you would actually be reading less. Each pathway is the length of a short novella (and I wouldn’t expect you to read more than one pathway unless you wanted to).
"I really enjoyed this style of pathway storytelling. Roman . . . was intriguing and infuriating at the same time. The voice is extremely strong. Waite literally pulls us in and doesn't let us go until the very end!"
"Waite builds a story with consistencies through each path... As someone who had her first child at thirteen, I appreciated the candor and real-world insight."
"Less a journey and more a plummet through a mad funhouse of personal discovery, risky behaviors, and strange bedfellows, to a place where the reader overturns narrative stones and returns time and again for those left unturned, and the questionable choices become theirs with every turn of the page."
"Raising Women offers insight on how to acknowledge the human being and their experience, shattering any judgements of what a “real” woman should be, look and think like."
"As I’m reading the book, I’m legit like omg I knew this girl (Roman) growing up."
"Raising Women is a book that knows you. It knows all your secrets. It knows all the thoughts you've had. It knows what choices you've made, as well as the choices you'd change if you could go back and be a teenage girl again. It also knows that sometimes, a little self-discovery is the scariest thing of all."
"The whole story has followed You creating an identity as a woman amidst an infinity of mixed signals and potential dangers, and these lines really take that to a deeper level by pointing at the fact that this is not exclusive to You. The end adds to this final realization and seems to be speaking about how women are asked to sacrifice who they are."
