Paper Weight by Meg Haston

Paper Weight by Meg Haston
Buy Paper Weight by Meg Haston at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Teens
Reviewer: Zoe Page
Summary: A troubled teen battling with a tragic accident is furious when she's sent to an inpatient facility for those with eating disorders. A useful book for teens looking at a troubling subject.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 240	Date: July 2015
Publisher: Hot Key Books
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 978-1471404566
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Stevie had a plan. A good plan (in her mind). But, as is often the way, her plan has been interrupted. In her case it's by an unexpected and involuntary admission to an eating disorder unit in a different state. Under lock and key and constant supervision, she doesn't have the resources or the freedom to go through with it. And it's all a bit annoying.

This book flits back and forth between Stevie's life before admission and her life inside. Calling it life inside may make it sound like a prison, but that's what it feels like to her. As a minor, she is not free to leave, but that doesn't mean she has to cooperate with the therapists or her care plan. I have to say I found the sections within the unit much more interesting and engaging. Perhaps this is because we follow Stevie as she is living those days, whereas the rest is just her reflections, her memories, which seem a little less real and certainly less relevant to the moment.

This book differs from another I read recently in that it does give a few tips, for want of a better word, on the world of disordered eating. We learn how she surreptitiously exercises while staying under the radar, and some of the descriptions of her purging are quite, well, descriptive. We still don't know how much she weighs, but we do know she is not, much to her own disgust, at the level of below 85% of her target weight. She is not one of the successful ones, for she is neither thin enough for her liking, nor getting better. Her body is in limbo, much as her life has been since the untimely death of her brother.

This is a book about friendships and relationships that are important to teenagers, and again I was more interested in those she formed with her new cabin mates than her up/down issues with Eden, though I see why they were important to the story. Stevie seems like a strong character, but then of course she's not like the others. She's not one of them. She's not planning to get better and in fact has something else entirely in mind.

I enjoyed this book but I never lost sight of the fact that it was a work of fiction. This may be because I read it immediately after an autobiography of a girl with anorexia, and I kept comparing the two. As a book for teens, though, I think this really hits the mark. It's not always an easy read but it's not graphic or traumatic in the way it could have been, it's more the heartbreak and the battles Stevie faces, not just with food but with people too, that make it so. Again with the teen audience in mind, I think the ending is appropriate and reasonable. In some ways it reminded me of All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven and the plans the characters make in that and the things that threaten to derail them.

I'd like to thank the publishers for supplying this book and also point towards The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson as another book worth a look.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Paper Weight by Meg Haston at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Paper Weight by Meg Haston at Amazon.com.

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