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A review by kristy_k
Life Unaware by Cole Gibsen
4.0
Life Unaware takes on the world of high school bullying. Regan, our main character, starts out as popular and a bit of a bully, digging up dirt and spreading it in order to insure her spot in the social order. When she becomes the victim of a bully attack, her life is reversed and she is suddenly the outcast.
This story is such a reminder of how vicious high school can be and how much our actions can affect another person, especially bullying. There is such pressure to fit in, to preform a certain way, even to look down on those deemed different. This in no way excuses the acts perpetrated by Regan and others, but it sheds light on why some bullies do what they do. And when Regan herself begins to get bullied, she, and in turn the reader, get to see how actions similar to hers can really affect a person.
"Those bathroom stalls in there? Those are our hearts. Whenever someone says something about us, it gets written inside us, permanently. Sure, you can scribble out the words or try to paint over them, but beneath the layers of paint and ink, they're still there, branded to our cores like initials carved in a tree.
So we're walking around with these scars etched inside us, but no one can see them, so no one knows how bad we're hurting. Meanwhile, people keep talking and writing more words, until every inch of our hearts is covered with venom so black even we can no longer see the good in ourselves. So we start to add our own words, and they're darker than the rest, the scars cutting more deeply than the others ever did....
I realized, too late, all the damage I caused with words I both spoke and typed. Just like bathroom graffiti, those words will be forever written on some people's hearts. They'll walk around for the rest of their lives with scars inflicted by me."
This story is such a reminder of how vicious high school can be and how much our actions can affect another person, especially bullying. There is such pressure to fit in, to preform a certain way, even to look down on those deemed different. This in no way excuses the acts perpetrated by Regan and others, but it sheds light on why some bullies do what they do. And when Regan herself begins to get bullied, she, and in turn the reader, get to see how actions similar to hers can really affect a person.
"Those bathroom stalls in there? Those are our hearts. Whenever someone says something about us, it gets written inside us, permanently. Sure, you can scribble out the words or try to paint over them, but beneath the layers of paint and ink, they're still there, branded to our cores like initials carved in a tree.
So we're walking around with these scars etched inside us, but no one can see them, so no one knows how bad we're hurting. Meanwhile, people keep talking and writing more words, until every inch of our hearts is covered with venom so black even we can no longer see the good in ourselves. So we start to add our own words, and they're darker than the rest, the scars cutting more deeply than the others ever did....
I realized, too late, all the damage I caused with words I both spoke and typed. Just like bathroom graffiti, those words will be forever written on some people's hearts. They'll walk around for the rest of their lives with scars inflicted by me."