Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives. Her father is away on business. Her step-mother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps on going this way—thin, thinner, thinnest—maybe she'll disappear altogether.

In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia


Another book about eating disorders and another book that I really enjoyed.

This story was about Lia who is anorexic. It follows her thoughts about what she feels in regards to her life, her family and her ex-best friend Cassie.

Lia's parents are divorced and she is currently living with her father, his new wife and their daughter Emma. Lia's mother is a doctor and is very blunt on the way that she says things and in Lia's eyes is very controlling.

I believe this is part of the reason why Lia became anorexic and this is why she is currently living with her dad and his family. But living with him doesn't begin to solve her problems.

The story opens up with Lia recently coming home from a stay at a hospital for eating disorders and finding out that her ex-best friend, Cassie, has died. She doesn't know the details or even the simple fact of how she died. All she knows is that Cassie called her cell phone the night she died 33 times, and that Lia didn't answer. She didn't answer because she didn't know what Cassie could possibly want after not talking to her for months. Now after finding out that Cassie called her the night she died and that she could of maybe helped her, she feels awful, guilty.

Add this to her eating problems and you have one messed up girl. Lia has all these thoughts/voice in her head that tells her that she is fat and stupid, etc and she listens by not eating and manipulating the people around her to think that she is fine.

The book takes you through the few months of Lias life after Cassie dies. It takes you inside her head and the battle she has within herself as well as the battle she has with her family about her health. Tension builds through the book until the very end when everything explodes.

Lia is a hurt, sad, confused, angry girl. She just wants people to see her, to understand her, to pay attention to her. Her mother works all the time and is controlling and her father is always away and breaks a lot of his promises to her. I felt so bad for her because she just didn't realize that people do see her, that they do care about her. It was almost like she refused to see it or believe it because she only wanted to continue her destructive behavior.

It took a lot of pain and heartache but in the end Lia and her family finally started seeing things.

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