Love Betrayed is a rite of passage, maturation story, one full of pain and heartache, aimed at a YA to adult readership. It follows the changes in a popular, high achieving, high school student, following the death of his closest friend. It exposes a full range of emotions and experiences including insensitive parents who don’t listen, sex, school work, jobs, male friendship and what friendship can be between a girl and a boy, relationships; truth and lies, love and lust, suicide and death. In the opening chapter, the narrator experiences intense grief, guilt and self-hatred. The lack of understanding by those around the narrator is uncompromising and tough. The story explores the paradox of the narrator being successful in school in so many ways - academically, at sport, with male friendships as well as with the girls - while suffering great trauma through the loss of two very important friendships/relationships. The narrator’s confusion between love and lust is explored in the story. His lack of understanding of the girls around him – what they are looking for, what they need - is clear. His mistake getting involved with an old girlfriend several times gets him into great difficulties, which he knows at one level but ignores. Her complete submission to his needs, his lack of care for her; he is tough and uncompromising with her. He treats her poorly and she accepts this. While experienced with sex, he is completely unsure about what he is experiencing with the girl he loves: something far deeper. Yet he still wants sex and jeopardises this closest relationship in order to have it. Without an understanding adult to confide in and guide him, he mistakes this for a betrayal that – he thinks - pushes her to suicide. The narrator’s self examination is full of uncertainty and confusion, trying to understand what is happening with the girl he loves. Selfish and self-oriented he struggles for a more mature outlook without knowing what maturity is or how to get it. It is so hard for him to make sense of, he has no perspective with which to comprehend or draw the right conclusions. Life is led full frontal and fully present – as if blindingly in the spotlight with nowhere to hide and take stock. In the end he must struggle with the loss of his love, and the belief that he drove her to suicide. He attempts suicide himself, and it is only during his recovery he learns he had no part in her decision.
