Black Rabbit Summer

Raymond's rabbit is decapitated and its head impaled on a rusty nail on a gate. A group of teens steal and smash Pete's bike, then chase him. An older boy threatens him by squeezing his neck until he almost passes out, and by holding a box cutter against his face and telling him "I'll cut your f--king tongue out." He hits Pete twice in the face and pushes his head into the dirt. The same boy cuts his boyfriend's leg with the knife during an argument. Police find bloodied clothes, a burned-out car, and later a girl's naked dead body in the river. A drugged-out teen attacks a girl and ends up killing her. He later hangs himself, the result of which is graphically described.

A girl takes off her clothes and straddles a boy's lap, but he realizes she is drunk. She gets upset when he tells her he doesn't think they should have sex; she says he's "making her feel like a whore." Two teen boys have sex in a storage room; a girl takes a picture and blackmails them. A girl sleeps with a carnival worker she just met. A boy tacks up naked pictures from the Internet of a celebrity all over his bedroom wall.

Lots of British curse words: "f--k," "f--ker," "piss off," "twat," "wanker," "s--t," "arse," "hell," "bastard," "Christ," "t-ts," "bitch."

Pete steals a bottle of wine from his dad to bring to a "den party" in a makeshift shack; other 18-year-old teens also bring hard alcohol, pot, and vodka spiked with "juice" (a synthetic hallucinogen called TCI). The group also partied with "stolen cigarettes and bottles of booze" when they were younger (13-14), "getting drunk, getting sick, getting overexcited. . ." Pete insists he has no control over drinking. Nicole gets so drunk she can't remember if she slept with two guys the previous night. A carnival worker is rumored to drug girls and have sex with them. Pauly offers "Vodka Kick" and "blow."

Parents need to know that this book involves a murder of a teen by a teen, suicide, hallucinogenic drug use, and drunken teen sex. After all that, other iffy behavior seems rather tame: teens lie to their parents and police, smoke cigarettes and pot, and drink hard alcohol recreationally. Another disturbing element is the main character's apathy toward his own life and others'. When Pete learns his friend killed a girl, he notes, "I just didn't care. I know that probably sounds pretty callous, but the simple truth is -- I didn't like [her]."