Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

While reading Wintergirls, I had a very intense feeling. A very complex emotion that is difficult to describe. It felt like I was in the shoes of Lia herself. Lia's addiction to restraint from eating was more than an intense plot idea formulated to entrance readers. It was a powerful tool to help readers look into the eyes of a teenager who constantly feels she isn't good enough.

Cassie, Lia's best friend, was the one who got Lia in the mess. The adults in Lia's life tried to get her to distance herself from Cassie, seeing that she was a bad influence. This only drove the teens closer together. It was only after Cassie choked to death on her own vomit after a drinking overdose, that Lia's parents got what they wanted.

Or so they thought.

"I showed her how I'd been making tiny cuts in my skin to let the badness and the pain leak out. They were shallow at first, and short, like claw marks made by a desperate cat that wanted to hide under the front porch. Cutting pain was a different flavor of hurt. It made it easier not to think about having my body and my family and my life stolen, made it easier not to care."

As Cassie 'visited' Lia in her dreams, she drove her, literally, to the brink. To the point where she was willing to kill herself, in any way possible, to get away from Cassie. Which only made her problems worse.

Laurie Halse Anderson does it again with this horrific insider look into the mind of a teenage girl with a disasterous eating disorder.