Not because of her looks, but because she also suffers the same kind of demons some young girls face.

And Ashley is a very interesting character. I found Isabelle irritating at first, but at the end you start feeling sympathy for her.

It was quick and easy to read but still affected me somehow because. Isabelle discovers that the exterior is not always what it seems and that everybody suffers of their own insecurity. What is she doing here? She's beautiful and perfect, she doesn't have any problems. This could had been your typical eating-disorder recovery if it wasn't because of Ashley Barnum, the most popular girl in school. When her sister, April tells her mom about her bulimic business, she's sent to a Therapy Group. Isabelle wants to be perfect like the most popular girls at her school. Ever since her dad died two years ago, she, her mother, and sister has been grieving. Isabelle Lee(Cool name, by the way) is a thirteen-year-old bulimic. What a great theme for children who needs to have their eyes open for the real world.

Normally when I expect to read pink, little book like this one, I don't expect the tone to be dark even if the back of the book already said that it was. I didn't know if I wanted to give it 3 stars or 4 stars. I had a hard time deciding on rating this book. Who should show up there, too, but Ashley Barnum, the prettiest, most together girl in class. As the novel opens, Isabelle's little sister, April, has told their mother about Isabelle's problem. Isabelle tries to make light of this, but the underlying tension is expressed in overeating and then binging. Her mother, who used to take care of herself, now wears only lumpy, ill-fitting clothes, cries all night, and has taken every picture of her dead husband and put them under her bed.

Since the death of her father, Isabelle's family has only functioned on the surface. Isabelle describes the scene at school with bemused accuracy-the self-important (but really not bad) English teacher, the boy that is constantly fixated on Ashley Barnum, the prettiest girl in class, and the dynamics of the lunchroom, where tables are turf in a all-eyes-open awareness of everybody's relative social position.īut everything is not normal, really. Depicting with humor and insight the pressure to be outwardly perfect, this novel for ages 10-13 shows how one girl develops compassion for her own and others’ imperfections.įor 13-year-old Isabelle Lee, whose father has recently died, everything's normal on the outside.

Perfect by Natasha Friend