This book largely has fantastic reviews, but I found it to be pretty painful to get through. The characters were fairly fleshed out, but completely unlikeable. ::SPOILER:: The main character and her psychotic (literally) brother drop a cat off their roof to its death in the beginning of this book. Neither character ever evolves past that point. Devolve, oh yes-- and plenty of it.
The appendix of the edition I read had an interview with the author that confirmed something like 95% of this story is veiled autobiography. I found this very troubling. While she can be praised for treating herself so unkindly/realistically, she really seems to...well... keep explaining her side. This added a voyeuristic side to the book that pushed it into negative territory for me.
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Oh boy. So I needed a book that wouldn’t require much thinking after i got my wisdom teeth out, and i made the mistake of choosing this. But honestly it was fun. It was a lot of fun to read because it was so terrible. It actually started off pretty good but then it just went downhill. Really poor and harmful portrayal of mental illness, and very cliche and corny characters. It was also completely predictable. I’m sorry to give it a Poor review but it really wasn’t good. ( )

A great book about lies and how they will somehow resurface no matter what you do to keep them hidden. Also your true friends will always stay by your side no matter what your family did or who you were in the past. I felt bad for her brother because of that one traumatic experience which lead to his mental illness that messed up his life leading him to kill someone, while thinking it was the right thing to do and then being sent to jail for it. ( )

This book gets more interesting in each chapter.It's one of those books where you find yourself wanting to keep reading ans reading until you finally finish. Katie is an amazing swimmer who is very close to her brother, and is sent away to a boarding school to practice swimming, and just to get away from her brothers bad choices. Katie becomes friends with just a few girls, but thats all she needs. Estella, Lindsey, and Mazzie who is also her roomate. Katie meets, and practices her swimming with Drew the captian of the boys vasity swim team. They work together to improve there swimm times, and laps,etc but fall endlessly inlove with eachother. I would definietly recommend this book. It's full of surprises you won't want to miss out on!

Katie and Will were close throughout childhood, with a psychiatrist father they nicknamed "The Ghost" (never at home) and an emotional, alcoholic mother. As an affluent family in a blue-collar town, they were the source of envy and ridicule. This torment placed a lot of stress on the kids, and during his teen years, Will began to slip into mental illness. After a significant (and public) suicide attempt, Katie's parents finally decided to pack her up for boarding school, as Will's behavior had become increasingly erratic and his use of drugs was influencing her. At first, Katie was horrified at the notion, then she realized it was a chance to escape all of the misery and drama at home.

In boarding school, however, Katie was not the typical student, as she had not been raised in boarding school like the other girls had, and her parents weren't minutes off-campus living in a mansion. She did not know which white gloves to wear to what event nor any of the other social rules associated with their lives of privilege. Katie soon found her place as the fastest swimmer on the team, however, and fell for the most popular guy and swimmer on campus. Her friendship circle narrowed to just a few of the most popular kids also, those who smoked and drank excessively and partied all night without supervision in the indoor swimming pools at their parents' mansions.

This book followed Katie through high school, where she lived a life of secrecy, not telling anyone of her mentally ill brother and his drama at home. The story never really hit a climax, though there were a few suspenseful moments when Will became particularly unstable. It was a good story and it kept moving, but I would have concerns about letting my teenage daughter read it due to the continuous use of alcohol, marijuana and cigarettes, so much so that they were glamorized. I was rather disappointed in this aspect of the story as Katie experienced few negative consequences for this and remained a top swimmer! Why do books geared for teens include this unneccesary negative influence?

So in all, a decent story, but as a parent, I would not recommend it to a teenager, sadly, the audience that it was intended for. ( )