I honestly forgot I was reading this book. I expected more but it was very bland. Not a bad book but like I stated, I expected more. Callie's parents were trash parents.

The perspective on this one hits hard. It gets you into Callie’s head and learn what can drive a person to the point of self harm and why they do it. This is a story of her accepting help and learning about what made her start to begin with. Short book but powerful.

This book is a great resource for cutters everywhere. It tells the tale of a cutter from a first-person point-of-view.

I grabbed a pile of books at the library because we are looking for new books for our ESL classes. The book is short--- and the language is not complicated...both good things, but the topic is delicate and the teacher using this book would have to prepare the students and do some outreach.
The book is about a girl who is in a rehab center because she cuts herself to ease her pain/anxiety. At the beginning of the book she does not talk, but as she gains the trust of the people around her, she becomes more involved.

This is NOT a classic...and probably not a book any bookworm would think twice about, but the topic is a lot like a modern day "Go Ask Alice"...where the book is told in first person narrative (almost a journal) and the topic is shocking. Students will easily be enthralled....the length is also good...as it wouldn't take more than a month to teach....and so I will recommend it for the advanced students.

I would recommend this for teenagers who like the "journal" style that some books have taken. Or ESL teachers who need some variety to "The Giver", "House on Mango Street" and "Homeless Bird".

Meh.

I had to read this for a class in grad school. Honestly, there are too many side characters to make sense of who is who in the novel. If you read this, keep in mind that this is the author's first book. I was left with more questions than answers and not in a good way. I'm pretty disappointed overall.

"'It must take a lot of energy,' you say.
I blink.
'Not talking. It must be very tiring.'
I watch granules of dust slowly drift through a shaft of afternoon sun, and all at once I am tired. Something inside me sags, like a seam giving way. But my brain fights back."

"How do I feel? I feel like cutting. I don't know why. And I don't tell you."

A sudden liquid heat floods my body. The pain is so sharp, so sudden, I catch my breath. There's no rush, no relief. Just pain, a keen, pulsing pain. I drop the pie plate and grasp my wrist with my other hand, dimly aware even as I'm doing it that this is something I've never done before. Never tried to stop the blood. Never interfered. It's
never hurt like this before. And it's never not worked.

I imagine you working on me as an algebra problem, reducing me to fractions, crossing out common denominators, until there's nothing left on the page but a line that says x = whatever it is that is wrong with me. You fix it. I get to home.

As a teenager, I suffered from Self-Injury on a regular basis, and this book made me feel a lot less alone, even if it is fictional.

**relapsed in September 2016 and reread**