The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney

If you need a really good book about standing up for yourself, look no further than Daisy Whitney's, The Mockingbirds.

Summary from goodreads.com:

Some schools have honor codes.
Others have handbooks.
Themis Academy has the Mockingbirds.

Themis Academy is a quiet boarding school with an exceptional student body that the administration trusts to always behave the honorable way--the Themis Way. So when Alex is date raped during her junior year, she has two options: stay silent and hope someone helps her, or enlist the Mockingbirds--a secret society of students dedicated to righting the wrongs of their fellow peers.

In this honest, page-turning account of a teen girl's struggle to stand up for herself, debut author Daisy Whitney reminds readers that if you love something or someone--especially yourself--you fight for it.

If you're thinking "Does this book have anything to do with To Kill a Mockingbird?"  The answer is there are elements of the story in this story and it's weaved into it very well.

Alex is our main character who from the very beginning knows she was date raped but has a hard time remembering.  All she knows is that she is disgusted with herself and for what happened.  The star piano student at Themis, even her music world is tainted with the situation.  It's a very sad and gasping moment when she can't play her favorite piece, "Ode to Joy" without wanting to rip the keys off the piano for it being taken away from her.  Her safe haven isn't safe anymore and it's a heart wrenching moment for our character and the reader.

Luckily, her friends are there to help her when she tells them about what she thinks happened.  Immediately they tell her to tell someone.  Unfortunately at Themis, all the faculty thinks that every student is so perfect and that nothing bad happens at their school.  But Alex does in fact turn to her friends advice and enlists the help of the vigilanted student justice system known as The Mockingbirds.

I loved how this story weaved through the emotions and Alex coming to her memories of that night when it happened.  I loved the fact that her friends stood by her side to help her through an emotional pain that she couldn't face on her own.  

Basically, in short terms, I love this book!  It's a well woven tale of how to stand up for yourself even in the hardest of times.  To get yourself back to you before the you that you used to know was taken away.

It's a strong story that had me cheering at the end and not putting this story down at all.  I kept reading and reading past midnight some nights because of how this story kept moving.  I had to know what was going to happen next.  How the Mockingbirds worked, how the story was going to twist and turn and end.

For me, I love that Alex did take her friends advice to get the help she needed to become herself again and to stand up for it.  I was that friend once helping a friend.  I'm thankful that I could have been there to help my friend.  Not everyone wants help, but they need it when they are the most vulnerable and this story helps us all realize that.  If you are the victim or the friend of the victim, stand up for yourself!  Stand up to those that would take you away from you.

Daisy Whitney has the second book coming out this year, The Mockingbirds--The Rivals.  It sounds just as amazing as this story is.  I suggest that every girl ages fourteen and older read this.  It may just give you that courage when you need it most.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, who also is the author of the acclaimed novel--Speak, wrote this very illuminating tale of a girl who is going through a very very very incredibly rough patch in her life.

Here is what inside the cover says,

"Dead girl walking," the boys say in the halls.

"Tell us your secret," the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
I am that girl.

I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.

I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.

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 stepmother 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, bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia.

Now if the blurb from the cover didn't give you enough chills to go read this.  Just go read it.

The author carved a beautiful girl into a disastrous mess very well in this story.  Lia, our main character, doesn't feel loved, doesn't feel beautiful, and doesn't feel wanted by anyone or anything.  She's just the space between everything else in everyone else's life.  At first it makes you want to cry while reading it.  Why would anyone put themselves through this kind of misery?  But as Laurie Halse Anderson keeps the story moving forward, and slightly making the reader hope that Lia will live through this agony, you get a sense of what it may be like for these girls (in this case, teenage girls) who go through anorexia, bulimia, and cutting.  It makes you itch and crawl and your stomach churn with the numbers that are put on the page for how much one half a banana equals to in calorie, or what it feels like to sweat every night in secret to lose those extra five pounds in just a couple days.  I can tell you that my mouth watered for food and water on every single page of this book.

Lia is a very well thought out, mapped out character in this story.  As the story is in first person, you can get a real sense of what it is to be Lia.  To feel how she may feel.  The way her thoughts are written are truly magnificent.  There is no other author--I feel--that could capture such anguish and misery into one character.  As you read and watch Lia turn this way and that way and really try to win at anorexia without dying and cutting away her life through razors and knives, you really feel for her and I know I wanted to hug her every time she would swallow that bite of banana or bagel and cheer for just that small amount.  As the reader though, it's impossible to do that to a character.  But also the way that Lia's thoughts are written out are truly reeling.  You'll read through a lot--and I mean A LOT--of strike through words, sentences, and phrases even of all the good that does enter Lia's mind at times.  But also those are the strikeouts.  The bad thoughts are stronger, more domineering, and more in control that Lia cannot refuse what they tell her.  That's what makes you cry as a reader.  I don't think I'd really understood what went through the minds of those who suffer with anorexia or bulimia before I had read this book.  Now I do.  I feel as if I have suffered with Lia through this and now want to make it better.

I don't want to give much away about the story.  But like the blurb says up above, Lia and Cassie were best friends.  Then Cassie dies.  That's the way the story begins.  Cassie is dead and Lia can't seem to face the truth of it.  She had been getting better a bit slowly from earlier on before the story began, but as the story goes on, you read that she never left her winterland.  Just stepped across the border into spring to make people happy and since Cassie's death, winterland is her own.  It all goes downhill from there like Lia is riding a sled down a very tall snow-covered mountain.

Even though this story is depressing, and the first book I've read by Laurie Halse Anderson, I would like to call her the Jodi Picoult for teenagers.  And although this story has elements in it that no one should ever read this kind of in-depth material, I have made a decision that will hopefully never bite me in the behind ever for it.  It is a decision that my children will read this when they are ready for it.  I would like them to know that (like Lia's family tries to show her but she always puts away) no matter what, their family is there for them for anything.  It doesn't have to be a battle between disease, disorder and family.  It can be a winning goal though for person suffering the disorder or disease because they looked to their family for support and love and didn't try to wash it all away.  I know that things this bad, as in Lia's case, are never that easy to deal with, even with family at your side.  But it's something we all should know, anorexic, bulimic or not.

This book truly touched my heart and it goes out there for all the girls, young women and women and even some boys and men that go through eating disorders.  It also goes out to the author, Laurie Halse Anderson, for taking on such a strong subject that truly affects many many people in our world today and will always affect us in one way or another.  Bravo for taking such a strong subject and showing us the world that not many people--like myself--really understand.

I highly recommend this book to everyone aged thirteen and older.  (If this book needed a rating, I'd rate it PG-13).  Maybe you can see yourself in Lia somehow and overcome whatever it is you need to overcome like she needs.  And even though the story has the family hiding in the shadows mostly in the background, family is life.  Family is our truest support in this world of hardship and trials.  And I'll get off my soapbox now because this is supposed to be a book review, not a counseling session.

Truly though, this was a fantastic book.  Magnificently written.  Excellent story, excellently told.