Popsugar Reading Challenge Book #5

Back to me and back to the internet for the next prompt. Thankfully there are multiple library branches within 15 minutes of each other so my mom and I can get the same book out at the same time.

A Book with A Season in the Title: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. 

I need to preface this with two facts:

1) I am not a fan of Young Adult (YA) fiction.

2) I didn’t know this was a YA book when I chose it.

Lia is an 18 year old girl who is lost inside herself. She is fighting demons that she doesn’t understand.  Her weapon of choice is starvation and self mutilation in the form of cutting.

Her best friend for years uses binging and purging as her weapon, but loses her war in the first pages of the book.

The author paints a world, both of reality and the one trapped inside Lia’s head, in a way that immediately feels accessible and tangible. I found myself feeling scared for Lia, then angry, then hopeless. It’s what a book should do: pull you into the story and teach you a new way to look at people, at the world.

I give credit to the author for making a very difficult and real topic accessible and endearing while laying out the dangers in a plain way. Still, I wish it wasn’t a YA book. I wish it was written with beefier vocabulary, heartier themes and a more grown up feel. That’s the way I always feel when reading a YA book though: a vague feeling of being gypped out of a deeper meaning, a more robust story.

Anyway.

If you like YA novels, this is one to read. Even if not the story has a way of wrapping around you.

I’d give it 3.5/5