This Song Will Save Your Life

Author: Leila Sales 

Pages: 276
Genre: Contemporary
First Published: September 2013
Book Description (from Good Reads): Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Warnings: The story does mention self-harm, suicidal thoughts, bullying and eating disorders(very, very lightly). 

Things to consider:

• Characters: 7.5
• Elise is not my favorite character, she is deeply flawed and it took a while to get to a point of being ok with her. She is like any super cliche a bit exaggerated teen in high school. EVERYBODY hates her, yet no one ever tried to be her friend. A bit annoying at some points, but then again sometimes when bad things happen you do feel like the whole wide world around you know so I guess that's where this was coming from. In the end, she grew into me, and I kind of like her. 
• The family here are interesting and it shows how even in a very understanding family you can feel unprepared for the rest of the world, how depression and a bad mental situation can creep into you.
• Char is an awful option as the love interest, crush or friend of anybody. Yet very realistically men like that tend to be very popular especially with young girls. 
• Most of Elise's classmates are very flawed cliche mean girls wannabes and her lunch hour companions, you don't get to like because mostly Elise does not care about them at all for most of the story.
• Plot 6.5
• There is really very little plot, mostly is everyday life for a high school student who has very bad luck or decision-making abilities. She does not like to receive help because well no one in her life, not her parents or very few friends can actually help.
• Very sad really, to live thinking there is really no one who can honestly care about you and make all your decisions based on that. 
• Still the situations here help to relate to that, maybe no one can have all that happen to them or maybe they had it worse or nothing like that but growing up has never been easy and even when the teen in question consider themselves very mature and smart for their age the decisions they make are not always the most logical. 
• Logic: 8.0
• The situations make sense while reading them even if you would like to believe that taking another route is best... Communication would have saved a lot of headaches between Elise, her new found friends, her flimsy relationship, her parents and family.Yet it does make sense the fact that she chooses to confide in them after she hit an impasse. Actually open up to people is very hard and she has to be forced to do it. 
• Do not like the decisions she makes a lot of times but oh well, can't say they are not realistic enough.
• Writing style: 8.5
• The book is not exactly what you expect, you do not get a tight group of friends right behind the main character, you do no get the super flawed family, yet they are not perfect. It is so much drama, so much depression, it is somewhat difficult to get through without feeling a lot. It might just be annoyance at Elise's situation or her response to everything, but it gets to you.
• The way it portrays everything was very good yet there were certain issues that were too glassed over, relationship between a minor and an adult, for example, that was a huge detail that was not mentioned, it was not just wrong for the fact that she was a very young girl; she was also in a very vulnerable state of mind when the newfound relationship was formed... There were people who knew of it and yet they were ok with it as well.
• Intention: 9.0
• There were a lot of things to take from this story but mainly I want to mention: 
• Accept yourself. 
• There is nothing wrong with being different. 
• Communication can save you a lot of trouble.
• You should not love someone for who they might become, like them for who they are.
• There are a lot of messages here but read it and find out.
• Intrigue 5.0
• No intrigue really, you can pretty much anticipate what's coming except for the author of the online journal pretty much because that was plain weird.
• Enjoyment: 8.5
• This story after I got used to it and passed the first few chapters I was really into it. I really liked it. More because of the topics it mentions. But I am not the intended audience for this book, I do like it but I would have loved it if I had read it when I was younger. 

Total score: 53.0

Average: 7.58

Star rating 3.5

Used to accomplish the challenge:

Mythothon Hermes god of travelers and thieves. Read a book set in a country not your own.