Lia and Cassie are the best of friends. Having met as young children, they grew up together. Through thick and thin they were always inseparable. That is until being thin became the most important thing to them.
Cassie is bulimic: binging and then purging all that she consumes. Lia has more restraint than that, she is anorexic. Both of the girls help each other stay strong and keep their weight down. After a car wreck caused by the havoc Lia caused to her body, she is sent to a treatment facility and Cassie stops talking to her. Over six months Lia fights to stay in control of her weight, despite everyone else's best efforts to the contrary and she longs for Cassie to come back into her life.
Until Cassie shows up dead in a motel room, where she died alone. Confronted with the terrifying reality that her up-until-recently best friend is now dead, Lia struggles to define herself and what she really wants. Does she want to kill herself or is there something else creeping inside her that she wants to kill?
An open-eyed, very true account of what many teenagers all over the country face, Laurie Halse Anderson has again taken a very prevalent issue in contemporary society and turned into an opportunity to learn. Without glorifying the characters' actions, the author follows the train of thought of an eating disorder victim and explores some of the lesser known evils that can accompany them. Riveting and chilling, Wintergirls is a book well worth reading and passing it along.
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