Review: Pretty Girl - 13

Book: Pretty Girl-13
By: Liz Coley
Published: March 19, 2013
Published By: Katherine Tegen Books

Description: Reminiscent of the Elizabeth Smart case, Pretty Girl-13 is a disturbing and powerful psychological mystery about a girl who must piece together the story of her kidnapping and captivity.

Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scouts camping trip. Now she's returned home…only to find that it's three years later and she's sixteen-or at least that's what everyone tells her.

What happened to the past three years of her life?

Angie doesn't know.

But there are people who do — people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren't locked inside her mind. With a tremendous amount of courage, Angie embarks on a journey to discover the fragments of her personality, otherwise known as her "alters." As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: When you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the parts of yourself that are responsible?

Liz Coley's alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing - and ultimately empowering page-turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love

My Thoughts: Holy freaking crap this book was good, but good in a really messed up way. I dont want to give up too many details so I'll just say a little

We follow Angie, a girl who has just turned up on her street after a camping trip, but only, she's 16, not 13 like she was when whe went camping, and she has no idea what happened in the last 3 years. Slowly we see the loss of time. The breaks in events as Angie tunes in an out of things and originally she has no idea what's going on. She's missing time with her family, losing sleep and feeling things she shouldn't. Soon she realizes due to some traumatic events, her mind has created multiple personalities to preserve her original self. That's it, that's all I'm saying about the plot...just know you should read it.

This book tore me apart, and then patched me up only to tear me apart again. There were so many feelings. so many things that happened that I almost felt like I needed a different personality just to deal with the book. It was great and amazing and filled with happy times, and bad times, and times in between. It was haunting, kind of like a ghost story but not quite. It was scary, not in a terrifying sort of way, but a how can she deal with all this sort of way and makes you think in depth of the power of the human brain.

I'll admit, this book didnt originally interest me. In fact, I only got it because it was on someone's list as the best book ever, and still, I let it sit in my library bag until it was almost due. But once I started the book, I couldnt get enough. This review doesnt even do it justice, but there's nothing else for me to say

Do yourself a favor and read this one, now. Its just that good! My review? 5 BIG stars!

Random Rant Thursday: My Personality Disorder

First things First, I'm back. Wanna know why? You'll find out soon enough, if you read this whole entry. I'm happy to be here, and even more happy that you all were willing to accept my break. I don't think I've been gone that long, so that's always good.

I've been reading a lot. If you follow me on GR you would see that I've been reading at least 3-4 books a week but I didn't really feel the need to write anything about them. I didn't feel like doing anything I didn't want to do....And then I read a book who's review is coming soon and I found myself unable to wait to tell everyone how freaking amazing it was and I knew that my blogging hiatus was basically over.

I'm sure you all know the kind of book I'm talking about. The kind of book that you read well into the night and can't wait to pick it up. But I do something beyond that that my family seems to think is weird, and I must ask if you all think the same thing about it.

Sometimes, I read a book and the story is too real. The characters are so real I feel I can almost reach my hand out and touch them. What happens in the book affects my mood. It affects almost everything I do. When I was a kid and I went with my family to the movies to see something like Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, I would come back home and walk around the house with my hands down and out to the sides like Angelina Jolie as if I had guns strapped to my waist and sashay my non-existent hips as I walked. If I went to see an action/spy movie like 007 or something, I would find myself creeping along the walls everywhere I went trying to make sure I wasn't heard and then pop up on my unsuspecting parents with a water gun. If I saw a scary movie that took place in a basement, when I came home I would stand at the top of the stairs that lead to our basement, and peek around the corner into the darkness, breathing in that horror movie way that everyone around me could hear. I'm sure you get the picture. I was just that into it.

It's kind of the same now too, but with books and not as much with movies, though I'm older and can control myself a bit more so I don't actually act things out. I have noticed though that if I'm forced to stop a book in a particularly tense scene, I take on a tense vibe. I have to have a break to bring myself back to reality after I stop reading, like 5 minutes to myself so it doesn't affect how I act. I've snapped at friends and family due to my mood if they talk to me while, or right after I'm reading a story that's gotten to a bad scene. It's mean, but it happens.

The other day, BF and I had a deep talk where I told him that it felt like he didn't like the fact that I was a big reader for various reasons, and he responded saying that it's not that, but that when I'm reading, sometimes it seems I'll get so angry at him if he talks to me anytime around when I'm reading, that he feels I'd rather not be in his company when I'm reading. That his presence ruins my day if I'm reading, and of course I apologized because that wasn't the case at all.

Only recently, as I finished a book and lay in bed trying to assure myself that my life wasn't actually in ruins, that I was not living with multiple personalities, and actually do have a great relationship with my family, did I realize what was going on. I would get so involved in a book that I would infuse myself into the main character completely.The things that happened to him/her, would actually happen to me, and to tear myself away from it is to tear a piece of myself off and tuck it inside the book as a bookmark.

That's how I know when I absolutely love a book, and that's why I can't get rid of books I love, or have even liked, and that's why I cant loan them out; because almost every book I own has a small piece of me inside it. Every book I love has taught me something about my own life. I can't help but let it affect me, and I don't want to, because this feeling,the absolute infusion of myself into another character completely, is the reason I love to read. And the feeling afterward, the one where you're so overjoyed, or angry, or annoyed, or empowered that you can't help but tell someone else what happened and hope that they realize how genius it is...is the reason I love blogging. I'm back guys...and boy have I got a few stories to recommend to you....

Does anyone else understand what I'm saying here? Do you ever feel the same way? Let me know down in the comments. I'm so happy to be back!