Brutes by Dizz Tate Summary, Characters and Themes

Brutes by Dizz Tate is a raw, atmospheric novel that captures the chaotic intensity of girlhood in the sticky heat of Florida. 

Told through a plural first-person perspective, the book follows a clique of twelve-year-old girls obsessed with a local preacher’s daughter, Sammy Liu-Lou, who vanishes without explanation. What begins as an eerie coming-of-age story morphs into a haunting meditation on identity, obsession, power, and the blurred line between fantasy and reality. Tate brings mythic beauty into mundane horror, portraying adolescence not as a gentle transition, but as a wild, often violent, search for self through others’ reflections.

Summary

Set in a swampy, sun-blasted Florida suburb, Brutes revolves around a group of twelve-year-old girls—the unnamed plural narrator—who obsessively watch and imitate Sammy Liu-Lou, the beautiful daughter of a celebrity preacher. 

The girls are fascinated by Sammy’s confidence, mystery, and proximity to the adult world. She embodies everything they want to become and everything they don’t yet understand. 

When Sammy suddenly disappears, the novel fractures into a mystery, though it’s less concerned with solving it than exploring the psychological aftermath.

The story unfolds over 20 chapters, alternating between numerically labeled chapters and ones titled with the names of individual girls within or near the narrator group—Hazel, Britney, Leila, Isabel, Christian, and Jody. 

This structure deepens the hive-mind narrative by offering intimate glimpses into individual perspectives while retaining the novel’s central theme of collective identity.

The first half of the book sets the stage for Sammy’s disappearance and the emotional terrain of the narrator group. They are simultaneously excluded from and obsessed with Sammy’s world. The girls spy on Sammy and her circle—especially Mia (her volatile best friend) and Eddie (her enigmatic boyfriend)—from the margins. 

Their rituals of observation become acts of worship, imitation, and ultimately, projection. Sammy’s birthday party, where she shaves her head in front of her guests, becomes a mythic moment the girls replay endlessly.

The disappearance of Sammy ignites a community-wide search. Police officers, church volunteers, and grieving mothers rally together, but the narrator girls remain on the fringes, cynical and watching. 

They form theories, follow Eddie’s blog obsessively, and try to insert themselves into the narrative, reenacting scenes they’ve witnessed. Their fantasy world becomes darker as they wrestle with powerlessness, desire, and betrayal.

The latter half of the novel dives deeper into the individual girls’ psyches. Leila assumes a dominant role in the group, orchestrating rituals meant to summon Sammy or make sense of her absence. 

Her leadership, however, is rooted in fear of losing relevance. Isabel watches quietly, noticing the details others miss, sensing emotional undercurrents that go unspoken. 

Christian’s chapter is the most vulnerable, capturing her longing to be seen as beautiful, as real, as someone like Sammy—especially complicated by her identity as a trans girl in a rigidly gendered environment.

Meanwhile, adult figures are portrayed as either manipulative or ineffective. Sammy’s parents, particularly her father, offer a pristine public image, but whispers of abuse and control bubble beneath. 

Mia’s mother runs a toxic modeling program called Star Search, a training ground for girls to perform desirability for male attention. 

The adults’ hollow rituals of grief—candlelight vigils, church services, TV interviews—feel like theater. Jody’s chapter savagely critiques this performativity, mocking the adults’ need for spectacle over substance.

As the story builds to its climax, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves. At a chaotic party masked as a vigil, the girls finally confront the void Sammy left. But there is no closure, no body, no answers. 

Sammy becomes a myth, reimagined by each girl in different forms: martyr, rebel, goddess, runaway. Her physical absence makes her more powerful in their psyches.

In the final chapter, the narrator group no longer searches for Sammy. Instead, they begin to become her—or at least what they think she represented. 

With a chilling, lyrical finality, Brutes ends not with resolution, but with transformation. The girls step into adolescence with jagged knowledge: that power can be taken, beauty can be weaponized, and the truth is often less important than the story you tell about it.

Characters

Sammy Liu-Lou

Although Sammy is central to the plot, her absence is what truly shapes the narrative. Her mysterious disappearance becomes a symbolic event, leading the girls to construct their own myths about who Sammy was and what her fate might be.

Sammy represents an elusive ideal—rebellious, free-spirited, and defiant—qualities that the girls desperately want to emulate or possess. Her decision to shave her head at her birthday party, an act of radical self-expression, propels her into mythic status in the girls’ eyes.

As they struggle with their own budding identities and desires, Sammy’s disappearance becomes a blank canvas for them to project their fantasies. Her absence also highlights the girls’ inability to differentiate between their idealized version of her and the reality of who she might have been.

Sammy’s fate remains ambiguous, leaving her as an enduring symbol of their collective longing and internalized desires.

Leila

Leila emerges as a dominant figure in the group, a “queen bee” who seeks control over the dynamics within the girl collective. She exerts power over the group’s activities and influences the way they respond to the disappearance of Sammy.

Leila’s chapter reveals her vulnerabilities, particularly her deep insecurities about her status among the girls. Her need for power is tied to her fear of being replaced or overlooked, which is magnified by Sammy’s rebellious actions and her own simmering jealousy toward the girl’s unshakable magnetism.

Leila’s characterization underscores a complex interplay of power and fragility, where her outward confidence masks a deeper sense of inadequacy. Her dominance within the group can be seen as both a defense mechanism and an attempt to preserve her sense of identity in an environment where her own insecurities begin to surface.

Isabel

Isabel is portrayed as a quiet, introspective figure within the group. Unlike the more overtly obsessive and emotionally driven girls, Isabel’s approach to the disappearance of Sammy is more cerebral.

She watches and listens, observing details that others overlook. This role as an observer gives Isabel a unique vantage point, allowing her to process the events around her in a more detached, analytical way.

Her introspective nature contrasts sharply with the more outwardly emotional reactions of her peers, making her a kind of quiet keeper of truths. Isabel’s ability to read the emotional landscape of the group, combined with her unease about the manipulation of Sammy’s image, allows her to see the cracks in the girls’ fantasy construction.

Christian

Christian’s chapter introduces a compelling exploration of gender identity and the desire to be seen. As a trans girl, Christian navigates the complexities of gender fluidity, often feeling invisible or misunderstood within the group.

Her longing to be desired and validated, particularly in comparison to Sammy’s perceived beauty and autonomy, underscores her internal conflict. Christian’s journey is one of self-discovery, grappling with the societal expectations of femininity and the personal longing to fit into a space where she feels validated.

Her identity is fluid, and her emotions are raw, as she struggles to reconcile her true self with the external pressures to conform to a narrow, gendered ideal of girlhood.

Jody

Jody stands apart from the other girls in her more cynical view of the adult world. Her chapter provides a sharp critique of the performative grief displayed by the adults in the wake of Sammy’s disappearance.

Jody’s observations reveal her growing awareness of the hypocrisy and shallow rituals that govern the adults’ responses to trauma. Her biting commentary exposes the contradictions in the way grief and mourning are staged for public consumption, a stark contrast to the girls’ more visceral, internalized emotional reactions.

Jody’s role as a disillusioned observer highlights her transition from childhood innocence to a more complex, albeit jaded, understanding of the adult world.

The Girls as a Collective Voice

The novel’s plural first-person narrative positions the group of preteen girls as a collective protagonist, giving voice to their shared experiences, emotions, and obsessions. This communal perspective allows the characters to experience the disappearance of Sammy Liu-Lou through a unified lens, where individual identities blur into a single, hive-mind consciousness.

The group’s collective voyeurism—constantly watching Sammy and her friends—fuels their obsession and forms the crux of their emotional development. As they grow more involved in Sammy’s world, their longing, jealousy, and fixation push them toward a dangerous emotional threshold, where their fantasies of Sammy become indistinguishable from reality.

These girls’ identities are defined as much by their interdependence as by their individual characteristics. Their evolving desires and behaviors mirror each other in intricate ways.

Themes

The Complexities of Identity and the Unraveling of Innocence

In Brutes by Dizz Tate, the theme of identity—particularly in its fluidity and complexity—pervades the narrative, especially through the lens of the young girls’ experiences. This theme is explored through both the collective identity of the group of girls and the individual identities they forge as they grapple with Sammy’s disappearance.

In their obsessive fixation on Sammy, each girl struggles with her own sense of self. Through their actions and thoughts, the boundaries between who they are and who they wish to be become increasingly blurred.

The girls oscillate between admiration and rivalry, often seeing Sammy as a reflection of what they could be or what they lack. For example, Leila’s attempts to control the group dynamics reveal her fear of losing status, while Christian’s journey touches on gender identity and the internal conflict of wanting to be seen for who she truly is.

The ultimate transformation for the girls comes when they cease looking for Sammy as a person and start embodying the mythic qualities they projected onto her. This transition marks a loss of childhood innocence, where the distinctions between reality and fantasy collapse, leaving the girls to face the harsh, complex nature of identity in a world that demands conformity.

The Deceptive Nature of Authority and the Breakdown of Traditional Power Structures

Another crucial theme in Brutes is the critique of authority and the way in which institutional powers—whether parental, law enforcement, or societal—fail the girls and their community. Throughout the novel, authority figures are depicted as ineffective, superficial, or downright complicit in perpetuating the chaos surrounding Sammy’s disappearance.

The police, the parents, and even the school administrators are shown to be more concerned with appearances and performative actions than with the actual needs or welfare of the children. This breakdown of trust in authority forces the girls to rely on their own devices, navigating a world without the protective structures they might have expected.

This is particularly evident as the girls’ obsession with Sammy deepens, and they begin to see the adults around them as hypocrites. The adults’ mourning rituals, the superficial search efforts, and the media circus surrounding Sammy’s disappearance all underscore the hollow nature of their authority, pushing the girls toward a more autonomous and self-defined existence.

The theme of authority’s impotence in the face of real tragedy mirrors the girls’ growing recognition that the stories they create around Sammy and their own lives are as much a form of control as the empty rituals of the adults around them.

The Dangers of Escaping into Fantasy and the Mythologizing of Trauma

The novel delves into the perilous consequences of using fantasy as a means of escaping reality, particularly in relation to trauma. The girls’ collective obsession with Sammy becomes a mechanism of both escape and transformation.

As they reimagine Sammy in mythic proportions—either as a martyr, a rebel, or a goddess—they begin to weave their own emotional needs and desires into the narrative. This process of mythologizing Sammy is not only an act of denial but also one of empowerment.

In constructing Sammy as a symbol, the girls try to make sense of a world that seems unpredictable and unsafe. They long for control, but the only power they can claim is through storytelling.

This theme is especially poignant as the novel demonstrates how their need to create a narrative for Sammy’s disappearance becomes a way to cope with their own internal crises—be it Leila’s struggle with her fragile social dominance, Christian’s desire for recognition, or Jody’s cynical dismantling of the adults’ performative mourning.

The interplay between fantasy and reality becomes increasingly distorted, and the trauma of Sammy’s loss is transformed into a narrative that the girls shape for themselves. The boundary between the myth they create and the reality they avoid ultimately collapses, suggesting that, for the girls, their fantasy is just as real—and just as dangerous—as the truth.

The Sexualization of Girlhood and the Consequences of Objectification

A significant undercurrent throughout Brutes is the sexualization of the girls, particularly as they navigate a world that commodifies their beauty and exploits their vulnerability. This theme is explored through various interactions and dynamics, including the girls’ obsessions with Sammy, Eddie, and the Star Search program, which positions girlhood as a commodity to be sold or displayed.

The intense voyeurism the girls engage in—watching Sammy, Eddie, and Mia—reflects a larger societal obsession with the aesthetic and sexualized aspects of femininity. The girls’ fixation on Sammy’s transformation, particularly her decision to shave her head, symbolizes their struggle to understand their own desires, power, and agency in a world that constantly objectifies them.

Sammy’s act of rebellion and transformation offers a brief respite from this objectification, but the girls’ eventual re-envisioning of her as a martyr or rebel reveals their need to reclaim some form of control over the narratives surrounding their bodies and desires. The exploration of sexuality is intricately tied to the girls’ emerging sense of self, where their growing awareness of their own desires becomes entangled with their struggle against societal expectations.

This theme underscores the dangers of objectifying girls and the complex, often painful path they take toward self-realization.

The Collapse of Childhood and the Loss of Innocence Through a Collective Trauma

Finally, the novel explores the theme of childhood’s inevitable collapse through the shared trauma of Sammy’s disappearance. The girls, initially depicted in a state of innocent curiosity and admiration, slowly unravel as they confront the realities of loss, obsession, and the growing complexities of their own identities.

As their fixation on Sammy deepens, the lines between childhood innocence and adult disillusionment blur. The girls transform from passive observers into active participants in the mythology surrounding Sammy, symbolizing the loss of the innocence that once defined them.

This metamorphosis is particularly evident in the way they begin to re-enact and manipulate the narrative around Sammy’s disappearance, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy. The girls’ collective trauma—unresolved and never fully understood—forces them into a premature adulthood, one in which they can no longer afford the luxury of innocence.

By the end of the novel, they no longer seek Sammy as a person; instead, they have become a reflection of the myth they created. This loss of innocence is not marked by a clear-cut conclusion but rather a haunting sense of dissolution, where the girls emerge as altered, more self-aware versions of themselves, forever shaped by the shared trauma they have experienced.