wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson *Review*

Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives. Her father is away on business. Her stepmother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps on going this way- thin, thinner, thinnest- maybe she'll disappear altogether. In her most emotionally wrenching lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia.

095.00 094.00 093.00 Lia can see her weight going down on the scale. As she hits each new goal weight she feels stronger, hiding from the family her pain.

Lia has been in inpatient treatment before. She does not want to go back. So she hurries downstairs on Tuesday mornings- weigh in day- and sticks her head under the faucet and gulps water until her stomach bloats and sloshes around and adds extra weight to the scale.

She puts a blob of food on her plate, squeezes ketchup on top, and leaves it in the microwave long enough for the smell to waft through the house and the ketchup to splatter in the microwave before she dumps it down the garbage disposal.

Her family thinks she's making progress. They do not know she gets up in the middle of the night to spend 2 hours on the stair stepper hoping to burn off the apple she ate for lunch. Nor do they know she sees the ghost of her ex-best friend Cassie everywhere she looks.

Lia's haunted by the fact that on the night of her death, Cassie called Lia 33 times and Lia never answered the phone.

wintergirls is a distressing/sad/tragic/sob/heartbreaking//: story of two girls with eating disorders who couldn't fight the demons of body images and family relationships.