I’m not trying to be cute here, but 15 minutes into reading The Fifteenth Minute, I became very uncomfortable.
This is an accurate representation of my face – my smile morphed from anticipatory to a rictus grin of horror. I love Bowen’s previous installments in The Ivy Years series, though I’m less enchanted with her Gravity series. I pre-ordered The Fifteenth Minute and was very excited. But then I read about DJ’s drama and suddenly I was much less excited. 
I did my best to keep an open mind and see where Bowen was going with this, but I never lost my feeling of discomfort.
FOR REALSIES – SPOILERS AHEAD.
So here’s the big source of discomfort – DJ, our protagonist, has been falsely accused of rape, and as a result is on probation, cannot enter certain buildings and may be expelled from Harkness. The things that came to mind are that the fear of false rape accusations is disproportionate to the reality and false rape accusations happen much more often in fiction than in reality. However, what Bowen wants to explore with this story is the way colleges and universities mishandle allegations of sexual misconduct. On that front, I think Bowen did very well. Bowen does a great job of showing the difficult position in which the university’s indecision puts DJ. He’s stressed, isolated, and being treated like a criminal and left with no opportunity to defend himself.
I appreciate that Bowen did not make the female protagonist a victim again. I can appreciate the desire to explore the issue from the guy’s point of view. There have been some very high profile cases of campus rape accusations that turned out to be false, or questionable. It’s possible that Bowen was partially inspired by this Washington Post article.
I don’t really feel comfortable saying that Bowen shouldn’t have explored this story line. It could work and it could be an interesting story. That said, even if the story worked, it would be an uncomfortable story. The same day I read The Fifteenth Minute, I read about a college student in the UK who refused to attend a consent seminar because he doesn’t think he looks like a rapist. Of course he looks like a rapist, because rapists are generally human*. Of course most men aren’t rapists, but he has missed the point. You can’t tell who is or is not a rapist by appearance. So while we still have such fundamental misunderstandings about sexual assault and consent, I’m going to have a problem with a false rape accusation plot.
The fatal flaw in The Fifteenth Minute is that the dilemma overwhelms the characters. DJ is boring. In order to be a sympathetic rape suspect, Bowen has made him inoffensive and such a good person we know he is clearly innocent. It makes him an uninteresting character. Lianne was marvelous in The Shameless Hour. I was really looking forward to this book because I LOVED Lianne. Prickly, smart Lianne becomes a soggy and boy-obsessed mess. There are so many interesting possibilities hinted at in the story, but they are all consumed by the false rape accusation. Lianne’s challenge as a character is to find her voice and take charge of her life. However, DJ must be so amazing that in The Fifteenth Minute, Lianne’s opportunities to expand herself come mostly because DJ gives her the chance. He arranges for her to DJ the hockey games. He contacts her brother to help her get new career management. Lianne helps DJ by bringing him pizza and being there for him. She forgives him when he’s an ass to her. Those are not worthless things, but they are relationship things. The ways that DJ helps are external world things. The Lianne that we met in The Shameless Hour was prickly and determined. She was a computer hacker and seemed entirely capable of solving her own problems. Bowen has written a more interesting too perfect male protagonist before and mostly carried it off. The Shameless Hour‘s Rafe was also a little too perfect, but Bella is still the author of her own victory in that book.
Lianne isn’t rendered entirely incapable, and DJ isn’t awful. This could have been a great book. The Bowen magic is still there, she’s just lost the balance between character and drama in this book. I wish she had been braver and made DJ a more complex character. I wish she had given Lianne more control over her own life. I may not pre-order the next Bowen book, but I’ll still buy it and read it.
∗I haven’t done extensive research on this topic, but Dolphins have also been documented to rape porpoises, and chickens are not particular about consent.
