Book Review: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Book Review Tuesday time...today's book was a hard topic to read about it; which is probably why it was on the Banned Books List, I read this book during Banned Books Week and I'm so glad I got to read it.  More books like this should be out there, true that it's a hard topic but it happens and we need to voice things like this.  I'm not going to spoil the book as per all my book reviews but if you have read it you know what it is about and the one big lesson this book teaches is: Never Judge People without know what is going on First.

On to the review:

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino attended an end of the summer party but she busted it, how?  By calling the cops and because of that, all her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from afar. 

She doesn't care, or at least that is what she says, and the safest place she finds is inside her own head, she has stopped talking to people, even her own parents.  She just wants to be left alone, because she thinks that is the safest place, be alone, but it's not safe.  There is something that happened at the end of the summer party, something she is trying not to think about, something that she is trying to forget completely by not thinking about.  If she let someone think that something was wrong with her, she would have to let them in and then she would have to speak the truth.  But she isn't ready, maybe she will never be ready OR maybe she will be if someone will care enough to notice that she needs help, or care enough to to help her.

I knew this book was banned but I wasn't sure what it was about and when I started to read and then found out what it was about, I was mad and sad.  Not because what the book was about, but because there are probably so many girls like Melinda out there and we don't even realize it and I just wish that people will read and share this story, even if it is fiction, we just never know if it can save a life or more than one life.

4 out 5 stars-I wanted more, I wanted an after, I wanted to know that Melinda is okay and living a wonderful life many years after.

XOXO,

Nelia