You’re a wintergirl, Lia-Lia, caught in between the worlds. You’re a ghost with a beating heart.

I recently read Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak. I always find books about anorexia strangely fascinating, ever since I was in my teens. The idea of girls who would voluntarily give up food astounded me and I was desperate to get inside their heads. One of the first books I read on the subject was The Best Little Girl In the World by Levenkron, and I’ve been hooked since then.

Wintergirls starts just as Lia, a seventeen year old anorexia sufferer, finds out her old best friend, Cassie, has died, alone, in a motel room. On the night she died, she called Lia thirty-three times. Lia didn’t pick up. And so continues Lia’s ongoing struggle to be thin. To beat Cassie. Even if it means losing everything else first.

Anderson is a pillar of troubled teen fiction and I adored this book, just as I did Speak. Lia’s obsession with food is enormous, driving her to tamper with the family scales, and pour washing up liquid down her own throat. I did love the book and truly have practically nothing bad to say about it. The only thing I possibly wanted was a little more explanation towards the title. It could have been that I simply missed it in my haste to finish the book but I felt that, although it was a great idea, it needed a little more expansion.

Like I said, only that tiny niggle. Otherwise, it was a book I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend to many.

When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time.

So I am excited about my library hoard this week. I went to the big, depressing library on Tuesday to pick up a few reservations and got Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Forbidden by Tabitha Suzuma, and, for a little re-read, Life as we Knew it by Susan Pfeffer. On Saturday, I’m planning on visiting my actual local library for the first time and picking up a few more reservations, namely, Uglies by Scott Westerfield, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin and then, the reason for my Pfeffer re-read, the finale of The Survivors Trilogy, This World we Live in.

I finished Speak at lightning speed; I’ve heard really good things about it and it’s on loads of ‘must read/best of’ lists so thought I’d give it a go. I’ve also found out a TV movie was made of it, starring none other than Kristen Stewart as the main character. I’ve not watched it (although I’m sure Stewart’s acting stands out as immensely wooden as always) but I always like to see adaptations of books so I’m on the hunt. The book itself was really well done, the writing believable and the main character, Mellie, relatable. The plot was interesting and honestly kept me intrigued. The crux of the story wasn’t an unfamiliar one for TF but Mellie’s silent protest make it more unique.

However, for all its good points, Speak does fall down a little for me. I, like Mellie, kept the same friends all through primary and secondary school. In fact, many of them are still my friends now. I cannot believe that friends who were as close as Mellie describes herself, Rachel, Nicole and Ivy would fall out over something like a party. They may fight about the phone call but there would definitely be some serious grilling of her real reasons. Friends like that should know her well enough to sense something was wrong. Also, although I think Anderson keeps Mellie’s appearance vague so she’s more of an every-girl, I found it distracting. It annoyed me that I couldn’t get a definitive picture of her in my head, in large part, due to the lack of description.

Speak was a great book to read although it’s definitely suited for younger readers than myself (well duh!). I’d say its at the lower end of the teen spectrum, even though the issues it deals with are unsettling.