45 pages • 1-hour read
Bully
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Background
Authorial Context: Penelope Douglas
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying and emotional abuse.
Penelope Douglas is a new adult American author. She was born in Iowa and worked as a high school teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, before becoming a writer. Her teaching experience exposed her to the full range of drama that adolescents commonly face, and these moments helped to inform her future writing style and content. She is best known for her Fall Away series, which has been noted for its emotionally charged and provocative themes and characters. Douglas’s first novel, Bully, was both praised and criticized for its portrayal of a character who falls in love with her aggressor. Douglas’s future novels and series follow similar themes and even darker plots. For example, the Devil’s Night series features a group of vicious teenagers who harass, intimidate, assault, and terrify women. Many of Douglas’s other novels, including Punk 57, Birthday Girl, Credence, and Tryst Six Venom, continue to push genre boundaries, often blending elements of dark romance with broader explorations of power dynamics, identity, and healing.
Douglas’s writing style focuses primarily on how her characters’ inner thoughts and feelings affect their relationships and interactions. She does not shy away from difficult topics like trauma, abuse, and sexual assault, and her willingness to address difficult emotions while staying truthful sets her work apart. By questioning conventional storylines and emphasizing issues like female agency and resiliency, her writing has had a significant impact on the genre of modern romance. Douglas is known for writing flawed but powerful characters who must navigate morally complex situations. Douglas also often subtly includes “playlists” in her writing, mentioning songs that play in the background and using this faux-cinematic technique to enhance the mood of different scenes.
Critical Context: Acclaim and Controversy About the Book
Bully was released to both acclaim and controversy within the romance and young adult/new adult fiction communities. The novel focuses on the volatile relationship between Tate and Jared, childhood best friends-turned-enemies. While Jared is the one who initially begins bullying Tate during high school, Tate soon takes on the role of a bully herself, and the two make each other’s lives miserable until they finally admit their love for one another. While Bully has been praised for its emotional depth and exploration of trauma, its content has also led to significant debate.
The primary source of controversy is the book’s romanticization of bullying. Jared’s actions, such as humiliation, intimidation, and manipulation, are severe and constant, and from the beginning, Tate wrestles between wanting him and hating him. Because the story details Tate falling in love with her abuser and risking the possibility of a toxic relationship, the novel implicitly suggests that for abusers, achieving full redemption is as simple as providing an explanation and an apology. This issue is compounded by the fact that Tate attempts to date a boy who isn’t abusive and feels nothing for him. This implies that Jared’s abuse and dangerous mindset are more attractive, desirable attributes in a romantic partner—which is particularly problematic given the relative youth and inexperience of the author’s target audiences.
Douglas defends the novel as a portrayal of flawed and deeply hurt characters who are nonetheless working through their emotional pain. Supporters of the book claim that it realistically portrays the ways in which unresolved trauma can manifest in destructive behavior. They argue that Bully does not endorse Jared’s actions but rather uses them as a vehicle to examine forgiveness, growth, and resilience. Bully therefore exists at the intersection between romance and dark fiction, exploring how trauma can distort relationships but insisting that healing is also possible. Regardless of the interpretation applied, the novel presents a range of difficult questions about the nature of pain, accountability, and the boundaries of redemption.
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