| View Larger Image | Skinny: A Novel | Paperbackby Laura L. Smith (Author)
| List Price: | $12.99 | | Price: | $10.39 | | You Save: | $2.60 (20%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | NavPress | | Page Count: | 176 Pages | | Publication Date: | September 30, 2008 | | Sales Rank: | 244,953th |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9781600063565
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
It's a risky thing to look at depression in a positive light. This illness, which is the leading cause of disability worldwide, threatens lives, steals hope, and destroys the spirit of the afflicted one. But it can also be an opportunity for growth. Light and life can be brighter and stronger if the spiritual roots of depression are addressed and resolved. Through her personal journey, Sharon Fawcett reveals how. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 3.5 based on 21 reviews)
|
Don't bother reading, watch Lifetime instead! by Mary Christo (NY)  1 Stars
November 25, 2009
Skinny was a free Kindle download. Now that it's $9.99 I feel sorry for people who will be paying for it. It's not good young fiction. If I were a teen I would find it laughable. Aside from being painfully predictable, the author uses every cliche. It's too bad because the book does address a serious issue.
| |
Perfect for a Teen Christian Girl by Purdue Fan 1994  2 Stars
November 24, 2009
As the title of my review states, this book is perfect for the teenage, Christian girl. Given I am a man in my late thirties, I kept looking at the dots on the bottom of my Kindle wondering how much longer I had to go in the book. Don't get me wrong, the book has a wonderful message for the young girls who are facing issues in their life. It also has a strong Christian backbone which if you like The Shack or other similar books you will appreciate. Unfortunately, the description of the novel didn't match the content and I was not expecting all of the religious backstory. I recommend this if you have a daughter, but if you are an adult you should pass.
| |
I'm so glad I didn't pay for this by S. E. Clark (Kansas City) 1 Stars
November 23, 2009
Granted, this book is geared toward a target audience that is much younger than I am but it would have been insulting to my intelligence even as a pre-teen. It grossly oversimplifies eating disorders and the recovery from them. There are well written books about eating disorders out there. This is not one of them.
| |
Not a total waste of time, by K. Gautreaux (Southern USA) 2 Stars
November 21, 2009
but almost. I totally agree with other reviewers who have mentioned the predictability of the story, the fact that there is an immediate recovery from a very hard-to-overcome disorder, the fact that not one of her friends displays any curiosity at all about why Melissa is fainting, and later, about why she stayed out of school for a whole week. The entire novel read like a syrupy sweet attempt to deal with a very real and very dangerous issue, but it never, not even once, got past the surface of the issue.
Also, and this has become my pet peeve with Kindle offerings, there are numerous errors in the book that should have been edited. A girl slaps her "taught" jeans, which I imagine should read "taut" jeans. Melissa vows to "annunciate" her French perfectly, while she should have been "enunciating" her vocabulary.
I'm very glad I got this book for free, because if I would have paid for it, I'd be one angry, ripped off reader.
| |
Good intentions, bad execution by Janna (Wilm. DE, USA) 1 Stars
November 16, 2009
I'm glad that the issues of body image and OCD in teenagers are being discussed, but like so many young adult books, this one barely skims the surface of the problem and oversimplifies pretty much everything involved.
As other commentators have mentioned, the recovery arc is far too swift, and the support group that the main character has is way too idealized. A teenaged best friend that doesn't even ask for details when her friend is out of school for a week with a mysterious illness? The only character that was very well characterized was the dance coach. Everyone else was fairly two-dimensional.
However, what I found the most problematic was the cheesy, unthought-out inclusion of God in the story. As a Christian, I am sympathetic to wanting to include belief and religious practice into characters. But the religious angle was almost always only tacked on to the rest of the story. The character never grappled with real, personal theological issues until the very end of the story, and that was too little, too late. And the problematic works-based theology that reinforced a lot of the negative behaviors just miraculously resolved itself at the end of the story, with no influence from parents, peers or church. Even then, the way that Melissa justified her actions and interpreted the Bible based on her superficial, randomly chosen reading is never addressed, even though I think that could have been a good jumping-off point for a discussion about true belief, dependence and acceptance.
This is just another example of the terrible, terrible writing that Christians accept, support with their money, and promote to non-Christians. I would never recommend this book to a teenager, despite its overall decent attempt at discussing eating disorders, because of its poorly examined premises and theology being marketed to less mature believers. Also, the writing is not very good, although not terrible when compared to the generally poor writing of much young adult fiction (especially Christian fiction).
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Thin
by Grace Bowman (Author)
Bright, popular, pretty and successful, Grace Bowman had the world at her feet. So what drove her to starve herself nearly to death at the age of 18? And what, more importantly, made her stop? A grippingly honest account of life with anorexia nervosa, "A Shape of My Own" is Grace's hearbreaking, shocking and, finally, inspirational memoir. An extraordinary story, it is also a common one - is there a woman in the western world who has a normal relationship with food? It is a compulsive read,...
| 
| Feeling For Bones
by Bethany Pierce (Author)
Pressurized family dynamics and a dysfunctional church experience force 16-year-old Olivia to seek her own reality. Hounded by the distorted reflections of mirrors, car doors, and shop windows, she sets things in order by papering her bedroom wall with glossy clippings from glamour magazines. Olivia's baggy clothes and exhaustive calorie scrutiny can't cover up the fact that she is allowing her body to wither away. As she encounters small town prying and a tighter-than-comfortable...
| 
| Unwell: a novel
by Leslie Lipton (Author)
“This is an important read for anyone dealing with an eating disorder: the individual, the family or friends. Ms. Lipton conveys a touching portrayal of the struggles involved with trying to overcome this illness.” —Cynthia R. Pegler, MD, Adolescent Medicine Specialist “A riveting and sensitive journey into the world of a teenage girl plagued by Anorexia Nervosa. A detailed, realistic account of the internal struggles and conflicts that exist in the mind of someone...
| 
| Perfect: Anorexia & Me
by Emily Halban (Author)
A remarkable memoir of a girl’s journey through anorexia
| 
| Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial, and Overcoming Anorexia
by Kate M. Taylor (Author)
Here, collected for the first time, 19 writers describe their eating disorders from the distance of recovery, exposing as never before the anorexic's self-enclosed world. Taking up issues including depression, genetics, sexuality, sports, religion, fashion and family, these essays examine the role anorexia plays in a young person's search for direction. Powerful and immensely informative, this collection makes accessible the mindset of a disease that has long been misunderstood.
With...
|
|
|
