Between , by Jessica Warman

Paperback, 384 pages

Published October 3rd 2011 by Egmont Books Ltd (first published August 2nd 2011)

ISBN

1405260483 (ISBN13: 9781405260480)

original title

Between

 

Only the good die young. Right? Elizabeth Valchar has it all: friends, money, beauty, a cute boyfriend and assured popularity. But on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, she is found drowned next to her parents' boat. Everyone thinks it was a tragic accident - teens drinking on a boat, a misstep leading to a watery death. But Liz is still here after death, and she doesn't know why. There are gaps in her memory. Her only company Alex, a boy killed by a car a year earlier, Liz sets out to piece together her life. But their small coastal town is hiding many secrets - about families, boyfriends and friendship. Plus, Alex hates Liz for being mean when they were alive. Was she as squeaky clean as she thinks she was? Could it be that she herself is hiding the biggest secret of all? Can Liz discover the truth? And if she does, who can she tell? An engrossing, compelling thriller that peels back the layers of small-town life to expose true, ugly, cruel human nature.

 

My Review

One thing that this book does is make you appreciate life. More importantly, its a book that I think all people with eating disoders should read because it opens your eyes to the affect that it has on the world around you, like your friends, family, and just youself in general. The book is very well written with a lot of deep thought provoking emotions that settle into the readers heart and really makes them think about the impact of life and death. What I loved about this book was the fact that I could identify with the main character, Liz! The book made me realize how selfish we can all be in life, but more importantly it showed me that people can love us for who we are and not for the way that we look. I felt that there was a lot of thought provoking edge to the book that just drew me in. The way it was written just seemd to have this huge impact on the emphasis that life actually has. The way it was written meant that you got this chance to really connect to the depth of the pages and that because of this you got to understand the story from the perspective in which is written

 

Although it perhaps seems a little predictable when you get halfway through it, its still intriguing and engaging. I did get this sense throughout it when something was clearly going on with Liz's life, that she had been the one to kill the other guy that hung around with her. Of course this leaves you with questions, like did Karma come and kick her up the backside for what she had done and because she had not told anyone about it. Was this something that was going to happen one way or another, through starvation or through drowning. The piece therefore just meant that you really got to reflect back on your life, and when she was going back through her past liooking at all her memories, you found yourself doing the same thing, wondering what it was that you had done and where you had or had not gone wrong.

I do think that this is a book that all those with eating disorders should read though, just because it shows how much of a selfish disease it is. But it also shows you what the disorder is about. It reflects that its all about this sense of control, but that there is an underlying reason for it always. It was powerful reflective and just an amazing and emotional write. I can't really say anything negative about the book because it just had me from the word go.

My rating