By Laurie Halse Anderson
Genre YA Contemporary
Pages 278
Recommended by Book Club
First sentence So she tells me, the words dribbling out with the cranberry muffin crumbs, commas dunked in her coffee.
Synopsis
Lia and Cassie were best friends. They shared everything. Even their deadly eating disorders. Lia is anorexic and Cassie was bulimic. When Cassie is found dead in a hotel room alone Lia is haunted by her ghost and her struggle with anorexia comes to a crescendo.
What is has going for it
I'm not going to lie, I ate this one up...no pun intended. Although, as you can tell from the first sentence in the book, that there is a lot of talk about food. Metaphorically and just plain descriptive this book talked so much about food I was stuffing my face and screaming at Lia to just eat!!! I actually cheered when she ate all the cupcakes! Laurie Halse Anderson has a very poetic style of writing that sucks me in and makes me flip the pages in a trance. I had no desire to read this one. I'm not one for eating disorders but once you start reading about Lia you just can't stop. I was engrossed. It was like watching an accident you just can't look away from even though it's not pretty.
What's lacking
Hmmm, I feel like I'm rambling and maybe being a little confusing. Did I like the book? No, not really. Yes I liked the writing style, that can't be helped, but the book was so depressing! I don't have a lot of patience for girls who have these problems and even if they don't say it...they blame everyone else. I felt like the author wanted us to believe that Lia's parents were so awful that she was driven to it. Well guess what? Life sucks and pretty much everyone has messed up parents. That doesn't mean we all have to go around blaming all our issues on them. At some point you have to just say, "yep, I've had a pretty crappy life and pretty crappy examples but I'm going to step up and take some damn responsibility for my actions!" Phew! Now that I have that off my chest. The other thing that drove me nuts was the book made me so hungry I probably gained 5 pounds reading it. See? Look at me! I can blame others for my issues too! :p
Favorite moment
When Lia eats all the cupcakes.
Yea or Nay?
Meh, maybe read it for the writing? Just be prepared to eat everything in sight.
I am glad it was able to keep the pages turning for you. Unfortunately I had to struggle through every page of this book. I disliked a lot of the same things you did but I also struggled with the writing style, it was so distracting to me that I couldn't focus on the story.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the book, there's something so powerful about Laurie Halse Anderson's stories. There were certain parts, the *other* thing she struggled with, that were SO descriptive that it made me antsy and cringe and have to step away from the book. If I read it now I might have some issues that I didn't have when I read it originally... but that's okay. :P
ReplyDeleteHmmm. This isn't good on a diet, huh? I haven't started it yet.
ReplyDelete+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteA book about eating disorders that makes the reader crave food??? Okay, sold! LOL! I already become curious about anything a character eats in a book that I'm reading, but it sounds as if Laurie Halse Anderson is deliberately turning it up a notch! ;-)