People do what they want. They love who they love. No one else can change that.

The only thing you can control is you.

- Chapter 5

 

That was the last straw. I breathed too hard, then I broke. All the pieces inside snapped apart and fell away, tinkling to the floor of my life and leaving a yawning hole where my heart should have been.

- Chapter 28

 

It might not get better tomorrow, but it will get better.

- Author's note

 

This book is heartbreaking, and yet hopeful. Teenage main character Ashley is in love with her best friend Matt, but he thinks of her as just a friend. He is popular at school and Ashley is constantly teased and bullied. In the first chapter, we find Ashley speaking to her psychiatrist and hoping to be released from the institution she resides in. He is asking her to recount the events leading up to "the incident" which resulted in her stay at the institution. We find out that Ashley sees an older version of herself in the mirror. Older Ashley gives her advice and tries to help her change her life. Older Ashley wants Ashley to have a better life than she does. But, she leaves out details in the hopes of protecting her younger self.

That might seem a bit confusing, but the book is not. We see Ashely's attempts to be strong and we worry about what will happen to her. Ashley's mother is almost as bad, if not worse than the kids at school. Her mom treats her as if she is the one doing something wrong. If she could just be more normal, then she wouldn't get bullied or if she could just fly under the radar and not do things to aggravate the other kids. Seriously?? Bullying is never the fault of the victim. Ashley's mother should have been her protector, not someone who makes her feel worse.

I liked this book. I felt bad for Ashley, and yet hopeful that she would find the strength to survive, despite everything and everyone who hurt her. At the end of the book, the author talks about how bullying is a form of torture and that she was a victim herself for many years. She talks about how she wants readers to know that they deserve help and gives them phone numbers and websites to use for help.

I read this for the Electric Company space, author's first and last name contain all the letters in "Tesla"

It has 282 pages and is worth $6.00

So, I landed on the Electric Company - Read a book where a main character is in STEM, or where the author's first and last name contain all of the letters in "Tesla".

I decided to go with author's first and last name contains the letters in "Tesla." The book I chose is Every Ugly Word by Aimee L. Salter. I found it on my Kindle tbr list. :)

Every Ugly Word was really good. I love twists in books, and this one had a really good one. I didn't expect it to go the way it did. The main character is well developed, but she is a little hard to relate to. At times I found myself frustrated with her decisions. I would suggest this book to any one of my friends. It was pretty great. I was full of empathy for the main character. When a book really makes you feel, you know it's amazing.

There were two things I was looking forward to in this book. No, make that three as I'd read some very positive reviews as well. One, the complete story is set as a conversation between Ashley and her psychiatrist (a setting I find incredibly interesting as it is exactly the kind of thing I've been planning to use for my own story - the one that has been in my head for a couple of years now and doesn't really feel like coming out). Besides, it has a Möbius-strip time paradox, which I always find fascinating. For both things however, it's important it's done right, for it can make or brake the story.

For that was my reason to read the book, it's not the main subject. Ashley is being bullied in the most terrible way, and even though it's clearly visible (even for teachers or the like) nothing gets done about it. Her mother is, to say the least, unsupportive, blaming Ashley for the awkward feeling she has when hanging out with the parents of the kids that bully Ashley. O, how I wanted to slap her in the face. Things get even worse when Matt, her best friend and secret crush, befriends her torturers making her feel even more abandoned. And all the while, Ashley's talking to her older self in the mirror, who's say she's trying to save her from the same fate but isn't willing to give her enough information to do so. 

It was a real pageturner. I was really curious to find out what the terrible thing that happened (and that they refer to right at the beginning, she's not seeing a shrink for nothing of course) was, especially since I also believed that it was the thing that Older Ashley was trying to save Ashley from. When I was reading I was always thinking: this is the last chapter, than I'll go to sleep. But I kept thinking it for the next 6 chapters or so. The setting working very well and made it very hard for me to put the book away.

I was wondering about the mirror paradox though. Ashley's conversations with her older self I'm willing to buy without as much as a second time. Nothing weird about that. But at first it's suggested that she's some several years older that Ashley's now. While near the end, it feels like

This however did not spoil the story for me. I wanted to say I enjoyed reading it a lot, but that feels wrong with a subject this serious like bullying. The story was very interesting though and the setting and (although not perfect) the paradox didn't let me down. I would definitely read another book by this author.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I've seen this as all kinds of different challenges before, but that wasn't really what I was looking for. I've got enough of a challenge ahead of me, and mostly I was just curious to see how many and what countries (and states in the USA) I was going to visit with the books I'm reading this year. Since I don't have the money nor the time to travel all around the world, I'm happy to do so in books!

I'm keeping tracks of the places I've visited and plan on updating the maps every ten books. Prepare and get ready for the first ten stops!

I started 2015 in Spain (The Barefoot Queen), which I left for one of my favourite cities: London, UK (The Paper Magician). I travelled to Berlin (Germany; Until the debt is paid), also one of my favourite cities and definitely a reason for me to pick a certain book up. Then some ocean hopping, first to Tennessee (USA; The Last Breath), back to London (The Last Magician), again to the USA, North Carolina this time (The Wonder of All Things). I've missed the exact location of Every Ugly Word, but it's definitely somewhere in the United States. The road-trip ended in Texas (USA; The Elephant on Sixth Street). Once Upon a Time is non fiction about fairy tales, so it doesn't really have a location of its own. But I finish this part of my trip back in London (From the Cradle).

Part 1-10:

Countries Visited: 4 (Germany, Spain, UK, US)

Continents Visited: 2 (Europa, North America)

American States Visited: 3 (North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas)

New Places: 6

Most Visited Country: USA (4)

Most Visited Place: London, UK (3)