lmaryea's Blog

This thrilling novel written by Laurie Halse Anderson is packed with a girl’s hopeless case along with traces of mysticism. The book tells the story of a self-destructive girl named Lia. Her life is brutal and sad. Lia narrates her shocking story of behaviors that control every thought and action.

Lia and Cassie were best friends. They did everything together, but when a body is found in a motel room…alone everything changes. That body was Cassie’s. Lia is left with no friend. She feels sad and depressed but Lia denies it saying “I’m fine” and “Don’t worry about me.” When Lia and Cassie were girls Cassie said that the promise they each made that night would come true. Lia promised that she would be the skinniest girl in the school skinnier than Cassie. Should you keep a promise to a dead girl? Cassie was a bad girl. She got away with everything. She was bulimic and that’s were Lia got it from. In Lia’s head she thinks it’s even more important to keep her promise. Slowly Lia cuts back on food, developing an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa. It takes ahold of her life. She has herself convinced that she needs to lose more and more weight until she winds up in a hospital. Lia’s parents are divorced. Lia’s mom is a doctor and makes Lia move back in with her. She forces Lia to eat but Lia is so obsessed with being skinny that she thinks her mother is forcing her to eat because she hates her. Lia knows that this way of life is bad for her but it has taken over her life and there’s no way of stopping it. She starves herself so much. She knows that if she keeps this up she’ll be thin…thinner…thinnest and then she might as well just disappear just like Cassie. Lia cuts herself and starves herself. She winds up in a hospital one day but she recovers time and time again. Eventually Lia gets so mad at her mom that one day she bribes Elijah to take her with him to Mexico. He says yes on one condition. Then everything goes black. Lia passes out from lack of hydration and food. When she wakes up Elijah is gone leaving her nothing but a note. Lia’s lack of food almost causes her to die. Cassie’s ghost encouraged it saying things like “You fail at everything.” Cassie says Lia is stuck between living and dying. Lia should just get it over with and join Cassie on the dead side. Lia almost does but eventually when she is in the hospital for the final time she decides to give it up and become healthier. Even after that Lia’s life is still a rollercoaster.

This book is one of the best that I’ve ever read. It was intense and shocking, I couldn’t put it down because it was so good. I would recommend this book to anyone. I could read it again and again and it would never get old. It’s intense plot that leaves you hanging made me not want to stop reading until I finished it. I love this book!

Here are some qoutes from the book to give you a better feel for it.

“She shakes her head. ‘You are not thinking clearly. You’re dizzy. And you lied to me about breakfast.”

“Okay, so I forgot breakfast. It’s been a rough day.”

“You look terrible. How much do you weigh?”

“Jennifer’s the scale Nazi, “I say. “Ask her”

She crosses her arms over her chest.

“Hundred and seven on Tuesday.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“She’ll show you the notebook.”

“You’re going to eat everything on that plate.”

Two scrambled eggs + milk + butter =365 + (two muffins = 450) = horror.”

“I took the knife out of my pocket and cut my palm, just a little. ‘ Iswear to be the skinniest girl in school, skinnier than you.’ Cassie’s eyes got big as the blood pooled in my hand. She grabbed the knife and slashed her palm. ‘I bet I’ll be skinnier than you.”

“Emma sees the blood painting my body and the red rivers carved on my body. Emma sees the wet knife, silver and bone. The sreams of my little sister shatter the mirror.”

“I failed eating, failed drinking, failed not cutting myself into shreds. Failed friendship. Failed sisterhood and daughterhood. Failed mirrors and scales and phone calls.”

The Foreshadowing is fabulous book. It is about a seventeen year old girl named Sasha who lives in England. She can see people die in the future. It’s the World War I  time period an she wants to be a nurse. Both of her brothers are fighting but her father thinks she should stay at home and be a lady like her mother. However her parents know better, they know that Allies soldiers amount will drop quickly without more medical help, so they agree to let Sasha help as a VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse). She helps there until one day her oldest brother dies. Her father says she can’t work at the hospital anymore. She begs until he says yes. With no notice one day she see’s her other brother Thomas die (in the future). Sasha snuck into her father’s office.(He’s a doctor at the hospital where she works.) She finds a list of all the trained (she is not trained) nurses going to help in another country. She looks through them and hatches a plan to put in action. She takes one of the letters of confirmation for a nurse. She plans to go and try to save her brother . He said he would be moving to a new war front to fight and he said where. Sasha was glad because she had a general idea of where he was.

Sasha after stealing Nurse Miriam Hibbert’s confirmation letter she boards the ship to France after meeting a new friend named Amelia (Millie) who is also going to France as a real trained nurse.They become fast friends and soon they arrive in France. They have to get right to work after learning the rules. Millie soon discovers that “Miriam” is not really a true trained nurse. Sasha explains to Millie her reason for coming. Soon enough she meets Jack, a guy who can also see the future,but not just soldiers dieing like Sasha. The head person, the one in charge Sister McAndrew is onto Sasha’s case and eventually discovers that Sasha is not a trained nurse. She sends Sasha on the train that goes to the war zone to pick up injured soldiers and bring them to the hospital where Millie works. Once again she runs into Jack who finally agrees to help her save her brother Tom. They travel from until finally they find him. I’ll leave you to figure out the end which very much so shocked me.

I thought this book was amazing, absolutely riveting. I think the time era was the right choice considering the topic of the book. I thought that the story being told from Sasha’s point of view almost added another dimension to the book. If it were’nt told from her point of view it wouldn’t be as interesting. I really love the idea that the chapter numbers start count down from 101. The best, most interesting moment at the very end of the book is chapter one. I think that’s a really good idea. You should definitely read this book. It’s one of the most thrilling books I’ve ever read!

You may think this book is about the Declaration of Independence, but think again because this is as far from it as possible. This thrilling futuristic book was exciting on a new level.

Surplus Anna has committed an unforgivable crime. What was the crime, you ask? She was born. Welcome to the year 2140, when scientists have created the Longevtity drug, a drug that can make you live forever as long as you take it regularly. The only catch? You have to sign the Declaration. If you opt in, you are agreeing not to have children. Kate and Alan Covey along with many other Legals broke their promise. They had Anna Covey, who is now Surplus Anna. When Anna was two and a half she went to a Surplus Hall where kids like her go to basically train to be a slave to Legals when they grow up. When Anna is a Pending meaning the Head Matron of Grange Hall (Anna’s Surplus Hall) is looking for work for Anna. Then Peter, a rulebreaking Pending boy comes. He tries to change the way Anna thinks about Mrs. Pincent (the Head Matron), her parents, and Grange Hall. Peter says he knows Anna’s parents, and that they still love her, But Anna won’t believe him. She believes her parents are selfish non-loving parents. Peter says things about Grange Hall too. Anna thinks he is a nuisance, more than a nuisance actually. He gets put in Solitary almost everyday. Then he tells Anna about a plan to escape Grange Hall. To escape they have to break the rules to get in to Solitary. This task is hard for Anna because she is a goody-two-shoes and is a Prefect, but she manages. They escape to what is referred to as the Outside. There, they rome around looking for Anna’s parents and trying not to geet caught by Grange Hall’s Catchers. The story unfolds from there, but you have to read the book to find out if they survive, or get caught, and if they find Anna’s parents.

I loved this book. I thought that Gemma Malley was very descriptive and you could tell exactly how everything looked. However, toward the end when she used a lot of first names I wish she would have explained who they were instead of just saying Barbara or Stephen.On a whole, though I thought this book was amazing. You can tell it’s good if you just can’t put it down. This book is available at the school library and I strongly recommend this book.