Stick Figure - Lori Gottlieb

Summary:  That's when all the trouble started.  First of all, my long blond hair kept getting darker and darker until it finally turned brown.  I know it doesn't sound that terrible, but one of Mom's magazines said if you have "dishwater brown" hair, you should take that "boring" hair and make it more "exciting" by dyeing it red or platinum blond.  Then next to the article there were these pictures of three different ladies with brown, red, and blond hair.  The redhead and the blond lady were smiling like those people on game shows who win trips to Hawaii, but the lady with the brown hair looked like she was about to cry.  So now I'm stuck with hair that makes you cry.  But that's just part of what's happened to me since second grade.  Believe me, it gets a hundred times worse.  (Image from  http://www.harrywalker.com/ and summary from back of the book.)

My Review:  Like walking down a familiar and difficult path, this book brought back many harsh memories for me.  The difference was that I was seeing anorexia through the eyes of an anorexic and not as a bystander.  This book rang true--Lori's intelligence, control, disdain for others, her fixation on minor things, her skewed perception of herself and others and her desire to never grow up--because being a grown up is hard.  Reading this was almost deja vu but instead of watching it, it was almost as if I was living anorexia.  I'm amazed at the diary of this young girl and yet all her social commentaries fit my own experience.  Young girls are sent so many mixed messages but the most prevalent at the teen age is to be thin and sexy.  Sadly, Lori's story starts at the tender age of eleven.  The girls I knew dealing with this were thirteen and older.  I cannot fathom watching a pre-teen going through anorexia and becoming so thin.  The distortion she details is right on: anorexics literally cannot see themselves for what they really are physically.  Her stubbornness, although frightening, is reality for a girl suffering from an eating disorder.

What I'm not sure is portrayed accurately was her recovery.  She just decided one day that it was just too much work to be the thinnest.  I know that this was true for her case.  Or maybe it wasn't but the book needed to end and she needed to show how it truly is a decision on behalf of the sick and no one else.  I think it would be helpful for readers, as well as young girls dealing with an eating disorder, reading the book to know that for some recovery is long, painful process with ups and downs, something that for many never truly goes away.

I must applaud her epilogue.  Lori Gottlieb is honest, blunt, and doesn't sugar-coat the reality of what she sees--it's refreshing.  Her sentiments about our culture, the advertising in the USA are poisoning the minds of young girls and plague the minds of women.  And we often sit there and take it, embracing it for some, loathing it for others, but nonetheless simply accepting the messages that are sent.

If you're needing to understand an eating disorder and want to truly understand what it's about, this is a good first step.  It will help the reader understand it's not as simple as just taking a bite--it's a mindset that must be changed, a world that should be challenged when it sends such debilitating messages to young girls.

Rating: 4.5 Stars

Sum it up: An insiders look at teenage anorexia.

The Real Prince Charming : Discovering God's Plan for a Lifetime of Fulfilling Romance - Michelle Raftery

Summary: An entire generation of young women are being consumed by today's dating trend; immersing them in various dating relationships. Over and over again these young women struggle with purity, the lack of self confidence, and security in God to stand up for their beliefs and values. They long for a fairytale ending and cling to unrealistic expectations, past hurts and guilt, turning most toward romantic pursuits. However, the secret to finding The Real Prince Charming is becoming the woman that God has called you to be and learning that He longs to have an intimate relationship with you.

Why would you settle for less when you could have God's best?

Facing common dating pitfalls, author Michelle Raftery points out that when you ask the Creator Himself, you learn what a special and unique place God has for women! (Summary from book - Image from amazon.com - Book given to me for review from BringItOn Communications )

My Review: The Real Prince Charming is a book for the single Christian woman who is looking to meet and marry the man of her dreams. Raftery disregards the standards set by romantic comedies and recommends against impractical expectations when looking for a spouse and focusing on the qualities that God values – kindness, love, constancy, optimism, and humility (among others). She suggests that a woman should abandon the concept of finding the perfect man and look for the man that God has created perfectly for her. She also encourages young women to accept their God-given personalities as gifts from Him that will enable them to live out His plan for them and to live lives of emotional, mental, and physical purity.

My favorite part of the book was the chapter entitled Waiting for the White Horse where Raftery outlines the pitfalls of sitting around waiting for a man to save you from a life of perpetual single-ness. She goes on to explain how to rescue yourself from life’s troubles, or at the very least, see them in a different light that will enable you to live life fully regardless of your marital status.

Spiritual truths aside, The Real Prince Charming was not without its writing flaws. By the end of the book I was royally bothered by the Prince Charming/Princess metaphor, as well as several non-Biblical analogies and embellished characters that I felt weren’t necessary to understand the text. I wish that Raftery put a little more faith in the reader to be able to draw obvious spiritual parallels without the aid of a metaphor or analogy. On the other hand, I appreciated how she made frequent reference to Bible verses and drew comparisons between problems we face today and those found in the Bible. Raftery uses many different translation of the Bible throughout this book (NIV, NLT, NASB, MSG, etc.) and, although I prefer the King James Version of the Bible, most of the verses that she used would be difficult to misinterpret regardless of the translation chosen. I was thankful that she drew so much from the scriptures and didn’t write solely based on her own personal beliefs without a doctrinal foundation.

My largest complaint is that Raftery skirted the giant elephant sitting in the middle of her book. What about those people who don’t get married--who don’t find someone “made just for them”? Is it their fault? Were they not looking hard enough, or in the right places? I’m fairly certain that I know what she would say and that I would agree with it, but the issue wasn’t even addressed and I felt that it should have been.

The final chapter of this book (and many places throughout) speaks to the importance of having a personal relationship with God, our Father in Heaven, and his son Jesus Christ. He is our Rescuer and Redeemer and the one person we can always turn to for support. I enjoyed the opportunities that this book offered for introspection, evaluation, and personal growth. At 100 pages, it was remarkably filling food for thought.

Sidenote: I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (you probably know us as “Mormons”). While there are some differences between the author’s beliefs and my own in regards to the nature of the Trinity and the repentance process, I believe the principal message of this book transcends individual religion and echoes important truths about women, our Father in Heaven's love for us, and His divine plan for each of his children.

My Rating: 4 Stars (Books with a strong, important moral message, regardless of certain writing idiosyncrasies, will always get my recommendation.)

Sum it up: A brief, but thoughtful, book that offers an infinitely more divine perspective on dating, relationships, self-acceptance, than the media-inspired (and ultimately flawed) concept of Prince Charming.

Dear Lilly - Peter Greyson

Summary: Life rules for adolescent girls.

A father offers his advice, opinions, and the many useful stories gleaned from his past experiences in order to help his beloved daughter not only survive, but thrive in the dangerous and unpredictable world of young adulthood.

From the pen of a former abused child, drug addict, womanizing frat boy, and suicidal depressive, comes forth the emotionally stirring account of a young man's battle with crippling inner demons and his eventual road to enlightenment. Peter Greyson calls upon his wisdom as both father and school teacher to gently lead teenage girls through a maze of truth, deception, and adolescent uncertainty. Greyson's literary style sparkles with a youthful enthusiasm that will capture your heart and provide boundless inspiration.

Dear Lilly is a survival guide that offers the brutally honest male perspective to young woment struggling for answers to life's deepest questions. Topics include:

• Boys lie
• What every guy wants from his girlfriend
• Tales from the drug world
• Everybody hurts
• High school exposed

(image from dearlilly.net and summary from back of the book)

My Review: This book was given to me for review. (Free books rock!) Brutally honest, as it states in the summary, is accurate. The first couple chapters left me feeling hollow inside, it was that sad and full of heartbreak. It seemed almost too much to believe that someone had lived through so many horrible experiences and come out practically no worse for wear. He really has lived through, what I hope to believe, more than the average adult life.

There are aspects that while reading I had arguments with the author inside my head. Some of those included the recommendations about dairy intake--especially for women who need lots of calcium and dairy consumption is the best source--and that it is so rare for a male to be able to control himself during his teen years sexually. Maybe he is right on the last one. I'm obviously not male and cannot make a statement either way. But it seemed not only to demean the male gender, but also to almost make an excuse for such base behavior. Be that as it may, I do believe that many of his statements stand for many males, especially during their teen years.

Aspects to the book that I liked: he really is brutally honest and fairly objective in his expectations for his own daughter. (I know. I practically contradict myself here, but in some ways this is great and in others it's too much.) I liked that he shared just how much it terrified him to know his daughter could date someone like he was as a teenager. (What could be more honest than that?) I liked that he supported healthy lifestyles and healthy eating--although, again, it seems he might be more extreme than I would push things. I liked how he ended the book on a good note. Those last chapters definitely make up for the downer first chapters. I almost didn't make it through the book because the first chapters were so depressing. He really did try to share all parts of his personality and threw in pieces of information on his wife as well.

One last note: he swears a lot, uses a lot of slang, and mentions all topics--NOTHING is off limits in his guidebook for a girl's life. I wouldn't hand this to my teenage child unless they are already familiar with a sailors vocabulary. As a teacher I realize this isn't something shocking for most families. As a parent with different standards, I feel it is important to share this tid bit.

Rating: 3 stars

Sum it up: A thorough look at all the mistakes one can make in life and counsel to avoid them.

Everything Sucks : Losing My Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool - Hannah Friedman

Summary: When everything sucks, change everything...

And that's exactly what Hannah Friedman set out to do in an ambitious attempt to bust out of a life of obscurity and absurdity and into an alternate world of glamour, wealth, and popularity.

Being dubbed "That Monkey Girl" by middle school bullies and being pulled out of sixth grade to live on a tour bus with her agoraphobic mother, her smelly little brother, and her father's hippie band mates convinces Hannah that she is destined for a life of freakdom.

But when she enters one of the country's most prestigious boarding schools on scholarship, Hannah transforms herself into everything she is not: cool. By senior year, she has a perfect millionaire boyfriend, a perfect GPA, a perfect designer wardrobe, and is part of the most popular clique in school, but somehow everything begins to suck far worse than when she first started. Her newfound costly drug habit, eating disorder, identity crisis, and Queen-Bee attitude lead to the unraveling of Hannah's very unusual life.

Putting her life back together will take more than a few clicks of her heels, or the perfect fit of a glass slipper, in this not-so-fairy tale of going from rock bottom to head of the class and back again. (summary from the book - image from amazon.com)

My review: Let’s be honest, sometimes when I’m given a book to review, I’m not entirely certain that I’m going to like it. I am hesitant to crack the cover for fear I’ll have to review the book using words like “abysmal,” “mindless,” and “incoherent”.

Hannah Friedman, you may breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not going to use any of those words. Everything Sucks is an intelligent, quirky, sarcastic, and authentic portrayal of a young girl weaving her way through the terrors and trials of adolescence. Keep reading...

Hannah's story begins in a public high school, where she is tormented and ostracized. Her parents quickly transfer her to an elite private school, where she is inexplicably included in the inner circle despite her lack of finances and fashion sense. Both of these sections are filled with mortifying moments you’d rather die than have to live and instances where you ache in painful sympathy. Hannah, as a character, is oh-so-easy to care about. I certainly identified with the beginning of this book, where Hannah was unpopular, insecure, and desperate to fit in. She was a teenage-me (and probably every teenage girl) in so many ways.

As Hannah progressed down darker roads of travel – exploring drugs, and sexual relationships, I had a harder time identifying with her experience (having led a fairly sheltered life). Her struggles, quite simply, were not mine and very foreign to me. Despite having to skeptically wade through Hannah’s experiences with drugs, sex, eating disorders, and family dysfunction, her story concludes with a message of self-discovery and acceptance. Nowhere is Hannah’s growth more evident than in her final plea to the universe. Despite her extremely rocky path, and the way in which she learned her lessons, I found myself cheering for the growth she had attained in those four short years.

While I can’t say that I would ever want my children to learn the same lessons in quite the same way or environment that Hannah did (let alone read about it), I appreciate her story for what it is – a dynamic recollection of her personal journey through a turbulent adolescence into the shaking footing of a young adult.

Sidenote: Mormonism (my faith) makes a hysterical cameo in this novel when a Jewish Hannah meets her boyfriend Adam’s LDS family (and all 72 cousins) at Christmastime. It was brief, but so true-to-life that I had to snort with hysterical sympathy. Oh poor Hannah! Meeting the FAMILY!? Children of the Corn!? *Snort*

My rating: 3.25 Stars. To a sensitive reader or parent: With a title like this it is likely to draw the attention of every teenager within reach – either because they agree with the statement or they think it’s another teen vampire novel. To that end I add a caution. Everything Sucks is a blunt, frequently profane, and graphic, portrayal of the life of a teenage girl. If you like to supervise your teens reading, you’ll definitely want to read this first so that you can discuss it with them. If you are squeamish about drugs or un-glamourized sexual situations, you will probably struggle with the latter half of this book.

Sum it up: An authentic depiction of a tumultuous adolescence and Hannah’s struggle for self-acceptance.