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nazariaag's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
casey887's review against another edition
2.0
Even though this book is about a hard hitting subject that affects many women and men around the world I truly think this novel fell flat. The way I see it is that Hanauer wanted to shove so much into one book that it kind of all got messy.
meganmilks's review against another edition
4.0
the title of this book makes it sound more harrowing than it is: sure, there is some emotionally devastating content, but the eating disorder narrative is only one strand of many here, and the central theme of the book is the narrator coming of age emotionally and sexually while negotiating a complicated family dynamic in which her father is an overbearing control freak who has to be right about everything. i was pretty impressed with this book and its attention to class, place, and ethnicity as well as gender. the narrator and her family are jewish, and are living in a predominantly italian american neighborhood in new jersey; she has to confront ethnic stereotypes quite a lot, including her own. her admiration/emulation of italian american culture is particularly interesting in that it gives her a way to assert her self-identity as apart from her family's. lots of compassion for all characters; not a whole lot about the roots of her sister's anorexia or even her sister's pathology or symptomatology. the anorexia here, when it is discussed, is often tied to a critique of overconsumption. i haven't seen this connection in other books that i've read and was pleased to see anorexia linked to a politics distinct from societal pressures to be thin. not to be dismissive of those societal pressures or the eating disorders they breed -- at all -- but that in the hands of some authors that's ALL anorexia is, and the anorexic is then disdained for succumbing/selling out in wanting to be thin therefore beautiful. hanauer dramatizes multiple contributory factors of her character's eating disorder without actually pointing and saying "here."
katkinslee's review against another edition
3.0
It was an ok story, I don't really know how I feel about it. Sometimes it just felt a bit stupid and I would have preferred to read more about Cassie than Billie. Billie felt like just another bitchy teenager.
I probably wouldn't read this one again.
I probably wouldn't read this one again.
wynne_ronareads's review
5.0
I read this book in high school, and ever since then I've listed it as a favorite book. I was reading it right around the time I'd gotten my hands on Incubus' "Megalomaniac" album, so when I listen to that I think of this book and vice versa. (Just in case you're looking for a soundtrack.) Since I first read it, I've read the book a few more times, the same copy in the same library where I originally read it. I have searched for it in book stores, but have never been able to find it in store.
Billie's story is so relatable, there isn't one plot line that seems stretched. The reviews I've read that say there is too much going on don't seem to understand how this novel relates to life. How many lives have just one or two big things going on? We're constantly juggling our relationships with other people, our jobs, our family, our thoughts about ourselves, our schedules-and that's what this book does with Bilie's life. She's not an extraordinary girl who learns any big lesson that makes you want to sigh and nod your head knowingly at the end. Everything in this book--Billie's overbearing parents who are in desperate denial about the eating disorder their older daughter is suffering from, her best friend whose family has a secret of their own, the two young men Billie has her first relationships with, and even her learning to come to grips with who she wants to be as a young woman, everything is rich and layered and wonderful and relatable. There's a reason its spent so much time on my favorites list.
Billie's story is so relatable, there isn't one plot line that seems stretched. The reviews I've read that say there is too much going on don't seem to understand how this novel relates to life. How many lives have just one or two big things going on? We're constantly juggling our relationships with other people, our jobs, our family, our thoughts about ourselves, our schedules-and that's what this book does with Bilie's life. She's not an extraordinary girl who learns any big lesson that makes you want to sigh and nod your head knowingly at the end. Everything in this book--Billie's overbearing parents who are in desperate denial about the eating disorder their older daughter is suffering from, her best friend whose family has a secret of their own, the two young men Billie has her first relationships with, and even her learning to come to grips with who she wants to be as a young woman, everything is rich and layered and wonderful and relatable. There's a reason its spent so much time on my favorites list.
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