Saturday, July 5, 2014

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

My second book for beach reading and it was a little bit more than I had anticipated. I thought I just grabbed a no-brainer YA book. Wrong.

Speak is an amazingly good book about a high school freshman, Melinda, who is entering high school as a complete social outcast. She became an outcast over the summer when she called the cops on a party she was at and her friends would not forgive her. The book shows Melinda now but shows us that she has become a completely different person than everyone knew.

I figured out pretty early what happened to Melinda at the party and, despite that, the book keeps a fairly light voice to it even as Melinda falls apart.

It is painful to read about such an outcast (I was not remotely close to popular or covered in friends in high school either) and it irritated me so badly that her parents just lectured instead of TALKING to try and find out what happened.

I ran through this one pretty fast, as it was a good read.  I'm leaving it at the hotel for another person to enjoy.


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