This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales - ADVISABLE

This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales, 276 pages.  Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013.  $17.99 

Content: Language: PG-13 (40 swears); Mature Content: PG-13; Violence: PG-13

MS, HS-ADVISABLE

Elise is determined to have her 10th grade at school be a social success and spends her summer studying the ways of “normal” teenagers.  She is sorely disappointed to find that she still doesn’t fit in at school after her failed attempt at fitting in the first day of school.  Elise goes home and contemplates suicide-going as far as cutting the inside of her arm with an X-acto knife.  Her parents try to get her some help, and seven months later she is closely monitored between her divorced parents, but still feels that she is not “normal”.  She wanders the streets at night to make herself feel better and comes across an underground dance club where she begins to find herself.  

This book depicts deep emotions that teens feel as they try to figure out where they fit in.  The bullying and harassing is heartbreaking, but Elise’s strong character and caring family help the reader to see the many options that teens have when faced with these hardships.  This book has a great message for the bullies as well as the bullied.  The only reason I’m not marking it essential is that Elise has a relationship with a 20yo college student (she is only sixteen), and she sneaks out into the dark of night without telling anyone and is rewarded for her dangerous behavior.  That being said, I think this book has as powerful a message as 13 Reasons Why, with a better outcome.    

Reviewer, C. Peterson.