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Melissa lost weight steadily, but her days were spent as unknowing "highs."
A quick check of my author tags reveals that this book has been lurking on my shelves since 2004, good Lord. Never let it be said that if you haven't gotten around to a book in 5/15/25 years, then you never will. It was just right for reading for recovering from the Moderna shot, and soon it will wing its way to its proper destiny and the place from whence it came, a thrift shop.
Too much verbal abuse by parents, not enough unknowing "highs" (via diet pills stolen from her mother). There's really only one high, and it's highly disappointing, consisting mostly of dizziness. Most of the book is Melissa being abused by her truly horrible parents for being fat. Her happy ending is getting introduced to a nutritionist who will help her on her lifelong journey of intensely monitoring her eating to stay thin without speed.
Like many books involving eating disorders or drugs, it functions as an unintentional ad for the exact things it's trying to advocate against. "Speed is bad" comes across mostly as a moralistic "drugs are bad;" while we're told it could kill her or drive her insane, the actual bad consequences are that she has a very mild freakout, then feels crummy for a few days. While Melissa's actually on the pills, she's not hungry, loses weight rapidly, becomes much prettier, and gets tons of positive attention when previously she got zero. They even make her hair--and I quote--longer and swingier!
If the author's name sounds familiar, it's because in addition to depressing YA, she also wrote a bunch of batshit Gothics, including the extremely memorable Trelawny aka Trelawny's Fell in which a pair of twins is switched so often that it is literally impossible to determine which is which, or even what you mean by "which."
A quick check of my author tags reveals that this book has been lurking on my shelves since 2004, good Lord. Never let it be said that if you haven't gotten around to a book in 5/15/25 years, then you never will. It was just right for reading for recovering from the Moderna shot, and soon it will wing its way to its proper destiny and the place from whence it came, a thrift shop.
Too much verbal abuse by parents, not enough unknowing "highs" (via diet pills stolen from her mother). There's really only one high, and it's highly disappointing, consisting mostly of dizziness. Most of the book is Melissa being abused by her truly horrible parents for being fat. Her happy ending is getting introduced to a nutritionist who will help her on her lifelong journey of intensely monitoring her eating to stay thin without speed.
Like many books involving eating disorders or drugs, it functions as an unintentional ad for the exact things it's trying to advocate against. "Speed is bad" comes across mostly as a moralistic "drugs are bad;" while we're told it could kill her or drive her insane, the actual bad consequences are that she has a very mild freakout, then feels crummy for a few days. While Melissa's actually on the pills, she's not hungry, loses weight rapidly, becomes much prettier, and gets tons of positive attention when previously she got zero. They even make her hair--and I quote--longer and swingier!
If the author's name sounds familiar, it's because in addition to depressing YA, she also wrote a bunch of batshit Gothics, including the extremely memorable Trelawny aka Trelawny's Fell in which a pair of twins is switched so often that it is literally impossible to determine which is which, or even what you mean by "which."
