2.5 Stars
POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING: Some material in this story --- especially the GWS chat logs --- could be possibly triggering for readers with sensitivities / tendencies towards eating disorders
Taking inspiration from her own struggles with anorexia nervosa, author Liane Shaw brings readers the story of seventeen year old Maddie, who comes to find herself sucked into the world of "thinspiration" websites. These sites are a controversial area of the internet where advice and stories are shared that subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) encourage young women to turn to anorexia or bulimia to reach their frighteningly low goal weights. When we first meet Maddie, she has recently been sent to a rehab facility for eating disorder patients, her official diagnosis determined to be "anorexia nervosa with bulimic tendencies." Though she denies she has a problem, when the therapist gives her a journal to write her story in, Maddie sees some benefit in the exercise, as it will allow her to tell her story from her perspective, so readers can choose for themselves whose side to take.
No joke, Maddie starts from the VERY beginning...as in, the earliest days of childhood, sharing any pivotal moments she can recall that may or may not have led her to being in this facility now. Though it's not necessarily crucial to Maddie's ED story, there is some comedic relief from heavier subjects in her training bra-shopping story. She's an 11 year old girl, newly introduced to puberty, goes training bra shopping with her mom, and OF COURSE the two hottest guys in her class stroll into the store just as Maddie's mom is holding up various styles of boulder holders up to Maddie's chest trying to figure out what size to go with. Also gotta love Maddie's rant on the term "training bra": "What am I training them to do? I didn't even ask for them and now I have to teach them tricks?!" 😄
It's not until high school that we start getting to the core of Maddie's struggles that ultimately lead her down the ED path. The first big incident comes during her pre-HS physical exam, where a doctor tells her it wouldn't hurt to keep an eye on her food intake / calorie count from here on out. Maddie interprets this as the doctor lowkey calling her fat. Just entering high school, Maddie is not the most popular student, but she's super curious as to what it must be like to be accepted into that crowd. Influenced by fashion magazines, social media, and the like, Maddie starts cutting back her portion sizes. Nothing alarming at first, but she gets a little addicted to the practice when she sees her clothing sizes steadily shrinking and the popular, pretty girls starting to initiate conversations with her, offering to do her makeup, etc.
Maddie gradually reduces her caloric intake even more --- to the point where she's showing early signs of malnutrition: headaches, stomach pains, muscle aches, persistent fatigue --- but she just can't make herself stop. Even when her mother and her best friend try to voice concern, Maddie tunes it out, convinced some people just want to see her forever fat.
The unhealthy habits go one step further the night she decides to do a Wikipedia search on the topic of eating disorders. While looking through that information, Maddie remembers a class discussion from awhile back regarding those "thinspiration" sites. A quick internet search pulls up pages of results for dozens of such sites, most with big disclaimers that say something to the effect of "this site is not here to promote eating disorders", but rather simply sharing information for those who want it. Though that might be what the big disclaimers at the top of the page say, Maddie scrolls to the bottom of the page on one site to find a listing for about a dozen more sites --- THOSE links in much smaller font --- that DO lead visitors to questionable sites. The one that most grabs her attention is --- you guessed it --- thinandbeautiful.com.
Through this site, Maddie meets and befriends the ladies of GWS (Girls Without Shadows). The shared goal of all these girls is to whittle themselves down so much that they "create bodies that no longer cast shadows." GWS members try to be cute in their message board posts, using non-scary lingo to describe their methods --- "choc tabs" (laxatives), "two finger tango" (self induced vomiting) --- but the group later finds their actions have very real, very life-threatening consequences. Prior to that though, we witness the gradual pulling away Maddie has with formerly close friends and family, especially in the case of Maddie's longtime best friend, Annie.
When Annie finds out about Maddie spending so much time on the thinspiration site, she tries to gently express concern and urges Maddie to seek help. Not surprisingly, Maddie's initial response is to get defensive and claim Annie "just doesn't get it." She even goes so far as to claim the GWS are now her "real friends"... even though she's never met any of the GWS in person and she's been close with Annie since they were practically babies. Then there's later a scene where Maddie's mom wakes up to what's going on, and that's how we meet Maddie in rehab at the start of the book.
As you might expect, given what we learn about Maddie pretty early on, she's strongly resistant to treatment of any kind. Remember, she doesn't believe she's the one with the problem. But also remember that this is a YA novel, and in YA novels virtually any conflict can be turned around with the appearance of a cute guy. Shaw delivers one in the form of Pieter, aka "Wolf", the lone guy in Maddie's therapy group. But his involvement in the story is not as surface-level as you might be imagining. While yes, there's talk back and forth about how all the girls in therapy find him cute and mysterious and all that, Wolf also helps Maddie realize some important stuff... such as the usefulness in being open to therapy, even group therapy! With Wolf's encouragment, Maddie begins to take treatment more seriously and whaddayaknow, turns out there is benefit in hearing the stories of others with similar struggles! Wolf's backstory also serves to illustrate how males can develop an eating disorder in a world where the trouble is typically associated with female patients.
For the topics it addresses, all the different trigger scenarios Shaw illustrates, taking time to incorporate Wolf's story and show how even men are affected by ridiculous body standards often pushed by social media... for all that, I give this story credit. But the plot itself could've been a lot tighter, more tension incorporated. It had that "yeah, good start, but...." feel through a lot of the story. While Maddie does have some moving lines here and there, I was hoping for the book to pack a stronger punch in general. Maddie's closing thoughts left me wondering if she was really going to have any long-term success with this therapy. Even at story's close, it seemed like she was only minimally processing all the warnings people were trying to give her.