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Letting Ana Go

June 23, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Retrieved From: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/anonymous/letting-ana-go/

These types of books are my top recommended novels for anyone to read. They are real life journals found written and nonfiction that have been turned into novels. They change the names in the novel so you cannot look up anyone mentioned to read about their life or get any medical papers. The medical papers are even included in the novel, but all important information is blacked out.

Summary:

A written diary from true life events, follows a girl named Ana who is struggling with learning how to control her life. An avid runner and sports player, she learns that the one thing she can control is her weight and her eating habits. This diary travels around what it is like to live with anorexia and how mentally draining it is to heal from learning that what you are isn’t good enough.

Reviews:

I love how raw this diary is and how accurate it can be. Although some people disagree with the accuracy, people have to remember that every case is different. Here are some reviews from GoodReads:

  • It was so sad. I couldn’t put it down because I kept anticipating the end, but I DIDN’T KNOW IT ENDED LIKE THAT! 
  • Omg this story was just as amazing as go ask Alice. I read this in a span of five hours and was rooting for the main character the whole time. It’s a very disturbing realistic view into anorexia and how it is a disease that affects girls every day.
  • I had read Go Ask Alice a couple years ago and decided to try out another book from the other “Anonymous” author collection. I am so glad I did. Like Go Ask Alice, this is the main character’s journal, which started off as a food/feeling journal. It is interesting to see what she wrote, her weight changes, and the evolution of her disorder.
  • To be honest I don’t know where to start about this book. Just the fact that it was written by an anonymous authour just makes you so much more intrigued to read it. I myself have struggled with anorexia nervosa since the age of 11 and just seeing that what I felt and thought happens to a lot of people sure made me feel like I wasn’t the odd one out.
  • I thought this one was pretty good! It didn’t fully describe what I felt when I was going through anorexia and it didn’t really describe how I feel now but I think the ‘anorexia experience’ is different for everyone.

Anorexia:

Health Observation: Anorexia Nervosa - Symptoms and Treatment
Retrieved From: https://healthobservation.blogspot.com/2017/01/anorexia-nervosa-symptoms-and-treatment.html

Anorexia is becoming a leading eating disorder in today’s society. With the beauty standards surfacing around social media, the one thought that passes a majority of young girls mind is to stop eating. It’s easy and it’s call restrictive type in the anorexia category. Most people attend a rehab clinic to help understand ways to become better, but you never fully recover and it’s something you have to deal with for life. It’s a constant battle that you have to overcome as you continue to learn how to deal with the diagnosis. You can read more about anorexia in Health Observation.

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Final Thoughts:

Although I loved this novel, it can be dangerous for young readers or anyone with a trigger. However, with the ending, hopefully it provides enough caution and awareness for young people to understand that it’s not a simple fix to fall in line with social media or life in general.

Picture Perfect

June 16, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Retrieved From: barnesandnobles.com

This Jodi Picoult novel was good. That’s the only word I can use to describe this novel. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t boring either. The best way to put it is it was somewhere in the middle. Although I tend to love Jodi Picoult’s writing style and topics she chooses, there was a missing spark in this novel. I still enjoyed it for the most part though.

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Overview:

Alex Rivers, a famous celebrity superstar of an actor, is married to Cassie Barrett, a renowned anthropologist. They were the couple who seemed to have it all. But Cassie gets amnesia, unsure of who she is, where she is, or who to consider family. Their relationship gives away a rough bumpy road as she struggles through trying to remember the past she has forgotten. The question to ask yourself while reading this novel, “What will happen next?”

Reviews:

Out of all the Jodi Picoult books, the reviews given for this novel are by far the worst I’ve ever seen. I would say that my rating is being generous compared to some of the others. You can read all the ratings on GoodReads, but here are a few I can list for you:

  • I have to say Jodi Picoult is not my thing. After I read this book I feel like I am having amnesia just like the main character. Do not remember much of what is going on with this book.
  • I typically love Jodi Picoult novels but this one was a huge let down. She typically focuses on relevant topics and is able to capture the details of everyday life along with the real emotions her characters are dealing with; but Picture Perfect was nothing but a bad romance novel. Her portrayal of the wife battering is shallow and unrealistic. The little that she touches on Native American issues is interesting, but again, there’s no real substance to anything in this novel. 
  • This was, by far, the WORST book I ever read.
  • Alas, I always tout Picoult as an authur of “good reads” but this one is BADD….It can be compared to the paperback grocery store “bodice-busters”. The story idea is OK, but the writing is? ? ? Where was the editor? The only good part was when the Native Americans were in the read. Don’t go for this one.
  • I was initially intrigued by this story: amnesia, a suspicious situation involving a movie star, a hot cop… but what I was left with was a main character who defined herself by the men in her life.
  • I had so many problems with this book. It really upset me that that Jodi Piccoult took the very intense subject matter of domestic violence and set it up through such an unrealistic premise

Domestic Violence:

Domestic Violence is a serious problem in the United States. It is a problem that grew much larger during quarantine with people in abusive relationships forced to stay inside with no means of escape. The fact sheet below is provided by Statistics at NCADV where you can find a breakdown of each state and every form of domestic violence across the globe.

Maine Domestic Abuse Fact SheetDownload

Domestic Violence is usually a topic that remains hidden due to fear instilled in the victim. Some people are blinded by love and passion while others claw to escape and some become numb to the abuse. Domestic Violence can also take shape in three forms: Mental, Physical, and Emotional.

Mental abuse is usually playing mind games with the victim and practically training them to view themselves as lesser then. Through mental abuse they can gain a whole other level of control, which is what most abusers desire.

Through emotional abuse, the abuser uses your emotions against you to feel weak and believe that in order for you to survive, you need to keep them around. This could also include verbal abuse and being able to manipulate your emotions about certain topics as well.

Finally physical abuse is pretty straightforward. It tends to be exactly what you think, punches, kicks, burning, guns can even be involved, and any other form of physical violence against the victims body.

Domestic Violence is another topic that is pushed pretty far under the rug, but we need the survivors and the victims still struggling to know that we are all there for them.

Final Thoughts:

Like I have mentioned before, Jodi Picoult usually touches on some pretty sensitive topics in her writing. She barely touches on the problem of pushing Native Americans out of their land, but it seemed clunky and weirdly placed within this story. She also didn’t do a spectacular job of making a strong woman character for this role. However, the reason why this book received its rating was because some of the portrayal was rather accurate. For the most part it was subpar, but I don’t think I could bring myself to lower the rating anymore.

People Kill People

May 29, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Retrieved from: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/people-kill-people-ellen-hopkins/1127922756

For me personally, this book is not very memorable. I am not a huge fan of poetry, but I thought it I would try it out anyway. With the poetry mixed in with changing point of views, it felt like a Walmart version of Jodi Picoult and Laurie Halse Anderson.

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This story is told from seven different perspectives: Violence, Cami, Rand, Ashlyn, Silas, Daniel, and Noelle. Don’t get me wrong, it is an intricately written novel with a huge message. But the way the author hypes up her own ending really threw me off once I read the last page.

The novel starts with a man accidentally shooting his wife, thinking she was an intruder. So the man sells the gun without a second thought, not caring about who bought it. The question posed throughout the whole novel is “The gun will fall into who’s hand?”

Will it be:

  • Silas – the member of a teenage white supremacist group
  • Ashlyn – Silas’s girlfriend who helps hunt immigrants in the white supremacist group (yes you heard me, I said hunt)
  • Cami – who is a teenage mother married to Rand selling weed on the side to make extra money
  • Rand – Cami’s husband who works day and night to support his family but has a dark childhood secret
  • Daniel – who has a stepmother who hates him after his mom gets sent back to Honduras and constantly lives with resentment towards everyone
  • Noelle – who now suffers with epileptic seizures and depression after watching her best friend’s dad get shot in the head over a road rage incident

After learning about all their pasts, it adds a bit of suspense and was extremely intriguing. I felt like Hopkins wrote nicely, but there wasn’t enough of a punch to her viewpoint. She hyped up the ending to be bigger than it truly was in my opinion. I felt like there were way to many questions left unanswered and a lot of fluff that wasn’t needed in the middle. I would have scored it lower if I didn’t agree with the overall message.

Although my rating is low, some people disagree which is totally okay. Some reviews given were:

  • “Absolutely incredible. Hard to read at times because of the subject matter, but absolutely necessary.”
  • “I’m always so incredibly impressed with Ellen Hopkins’ ability to emotionally wreck me. She is seriously one of my favorite writers. She always writes about something relevant and hard to read, always writes for the education and betterment of people. And she does it so well.“
  • “This was a really interesting commentary on gun violence in the United States. I liked reading from the different perspectives (only because it provided somewhat of an insight into the minds of real people with similar beliefs) of the characters and I enjoyed how they were all distinct from each other but connected as well.”
  • “Wow. She never fails to astound me”

However, an abundant of people did agree with me. Pretty much all the “negative” reviews do say that it is written beautifully, but there is something missing. Here are some examples of the reviews:

  • “Wow, what a let-down. “
  • “Thanks, I hate it.”
  • “Ellen Hopkins always writes beautifully. This was no exception, an interesting combination of both story and verse about race and violence. I’ve read almost all of her novels, but this one didn’t impress me, nor grab me like her other ones.”
  • “Before I got sick I finished People Kill People by one of my favorite authors ever (Ellen Hopkins) and I am just going to get this out of the way right now I was really upset and disappointed with this book and that is a totally new feeling for me with one of her books.”

I think the main reason why so many people picked this book up was because it focused on such a controversial topic. I congratulate Ellen Hopkins on taking a risk that some others would much rather avoid.

To read further on the statistics of Americans viewpoints on gun control, click here.

The controversy of gun control is something that has been argued about for years in the United States. This books demonstrates just how easy it can be to attain gun today, but tries to portray that the gun isn’t always the problem. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this aspect, but I can’t say I can blame the author. Pew Research says, “Similarly, a majority (70%) says that most or some types of guns should be legally available for sale in the U.S.; just 20% say almost all types of guns should be legally available, while only 10% say almost no types should be available.”

The other aspect of gun control is mental illness. I think that’s what makes this story so uncomfortable because some of the characters viewpoints are extremely crazy to me.

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Although this may not be my favorite novel, it was interesting to read. It was easy to get through word wise, but really makes the other think throughout the whole thing. However for me personally, it will not be a book that I pick up again.

Dear Martin

May 27, 2021 / / 0 Comments
Picture Received from: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534050/dear-martin-by-nic-stone/9781101939499

There are not enough words in the human dictionary to describe how amazing, raw, and truthful this story is. This book has so many messages that no one wants to hear. The fact that Nic Stone can portray systematic racism so well in a fictional story is mind boggling. Let alone expose how biased the media and court system are in today’s society.

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This novel follows the life of an Ivy League student, Justyce McAllister. After being racially profiled when trying to help his girlfriend, he decides to start a project labeled “Dear Martin.” This project entailed writing letters to Martin Luther King Jr. after dealing with racist comments from people at school. The constant question asked is “What would Martin do?” which makes the story plot even more interesting.

This is a novel filled with amazing characters of all different backgrounds and viewpoints. It adds an interesting element that most books discussing similar issues tend to leave out. This author is making a stand for something, trying to encourage a movement, and writing is the truth. This novel is something I will cherish for life and always keep in the back of my mind as I continue my own life journey. This is one of the reasons why it receives a perfect score. I thought this would be the best first book to review.

I am also not the only person who feels this way. The Students News Source of Iowa City West High say that Dear Martin “is a brutally honest, captivating novel that expertly discuss and portrays racism in our society.”

Some other statements written in the website that portray the novels integrity are:

  • thoroughly impressed by the way she simultaneously skirted through themes of racism and ethnic profiling while also creating raw, believable characters
  • well-crafted dialogue
  • each character feels like a real person from society, and they are all reflective of the attitudes people of all walks of life contain today
  • the letters were able to draw parallels between what is going on today and how it is not that different than what happened while MLK was marching for rights
  • this book is a must-read for everyone because of its powerful messages and demonstrations; while the book specifically talks about racism in America, its themes can also apply to many other injustices in the world

“They need to believe you’re a bad guy who got what he deserved in order for their worlds to keep spinning the way it always has.”

Doc (151)

This quote is one of my favorites from the novels, also given by one of my favorite character. It helps explain so much when it comes to the real world. This simple statement shows why there was such a harsh contrast between the sides of the George Floyd murder and especially the trial. Even after the autopsy report, people made George Floyd out to be the worst man in the world versus noticing the racism evident in the whole murder. The quote given from Doc helps further the explanation why some people do not want to see the truth because it disrupts the normal patterns they have always lived with.

This book is an excellent read that feeds information even if it doesn’t feel like it. Dear Martin throws you into a different world that helps the readers understand how serious this issue is today. If you’re a teacher I would highly recommend adding this to your curriculum. I not only ask you to please check out the book, but to also take a stand!

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