Helpful Score: 1
Reviewed by Christian C. for TeensReadToo.com
Anna is fat and depressed. She suffers from panic attacks, and has stopped going to school. Her parents, who are totally clueless, decide to send her to a mental hospital. Will that do any good? Anna doesn't think so! Not in this place. Nobody tells her anything, they have the weirdest rules ever, and she's forced to wear these ugly pajamas all day long with no bra!
But as days go by, things turn out to be not as bad as she originally thought. Anna meets other teens. Matt O. has been living there for six months. Six whole months? Will Anna ever get out of this place? She also spends time with Sandy, her roommate who's eating for two and has to carry a baby doll all day long. Victor becomes the first black friend she's ever had. And finally, there's Justin -- Oh, Justin! -- the cutest guy around who may have even looked at her.
Written in the form of a letter to her best friend, Tracy, Anna describes all of the details of her life at the nut house in a very funny way, with a writing style that is just like... well... that of a teenage girl!
This story is engaging, the characters sound real, the writing is refreshing and natural, and the descriptions of the situations are hilarious!
Great job for a first time novelist, who's also a librarian and spent time in a psychiatric hospital herself when she was a teen. (She claims to be fine now!)
Anna is fat and depressed. She suffers from panic attacks, and has stopped going to school. Her parents, who are totally clueless, decide to send her to a mental hospital. Will that do any good? Anna doesn't think so! Not in this place. Nobody tells her anything, they have the weirdest rules ever, and she's forced to wear these ugly pajamas all day long with no bra!
But as days go by, things turn out to be not as bad as she originally thought. Anna meets other teens. Matt O. has been living there for six months. Six whole months? Will Anna ever get out of this place? She also spends time with Sandy, her roommate who's eating for two and has to carry a baby doll all day long. Victor becomes the first black friend she's ever had. And finally, there's Justin -- Oh, Justin! -- the cutest guy around who may have even looked at her.
Written in the form of a letter to her best friend, Tracy, Anna describes all of the details of her life at the nut house in a very funny way, with a writing style that is just like... well... that of a teenage girl!
This story is engaging, the characters sound real, the writing is refreshing and natural, and the descriptions of the situations are hilarious!
Great job for a first time novelist, who's also a librarian and spent time in a psychiatric hospital herself when she was a teen. (She claims to be fine now!)
