This book was about a girl who noticed another girl named Suzanne in her town and she watched the little moves that the girl would make. She found herself drawn to this girl that she barely knew and wanted to know what it was that was so interesting about her. Her mother was mean to her in a way that she forced her boyfriends into her life without any consideration of her daughter. This lead to a big fight and eventually her leaving the house for a night. She ends up tied into a cult, while her mother believes that she is at a friends house while she in fact, is not.
The first part of this book really didn’t capture my attention and I believe that somehow, the book should have started out with the girl noticing the other girl. This would have made the beginning of this book much more attention-grabbing.
The rest of this book was very easy to follow. It is both in present and past tense and she spends most of the book reflecting back on the time where she was in a cult and wondering what that all meant to her now. The end of this book was very reflective and shows the reason she decided to join the cult that she was in. She realizes that if Suzanne wouldn’t have left her she probably would have killed the people as well because of the anger that was built up inside her. She didn’t leave with Suzanne, and instead stayed at the school that she was at, and i really like the authors idea in doing so. I believe that her not going with them made her personality stronger because we see that she has overcame this strong urge to leave, just like she would have overcame her urge to commit violent acts.
I believe that the anger that this girl has came from her parents. She was angry at her mother for having the men around the house, and then later in the story she was angry when she was forced into sexual acts for the cult. Her anger resonates with the writing, and I felt strongly connected to that hatred.
She was so drawn to this girl because she wanted that free feeling. She saw that Suzanne was free, and careless about anything that was happening around her. I think that deep down she wanted to be apart of that. Suzanne saw something different in her. She saw that she did have a little more good in her that would have gotten drawn out if she would have stayed with the group. So, Suzanne leaving her really wasn’t a bad thing. Instead, this was Suzanne’s way of telling her that she is free from the group. She wanted her to live a life outside of jail cells.
The end of the book resonates the whole story itself. She sees a stranger walking across a gravel path and she believes that the person is walking to her to hurt her. Instead, it is just any normal person walking down the path. I love this part of the book because it is easy to see how her mind is different from other peoples, and she will never really be free from her mind because of that difference.
