Sisters in Sanity
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The very first novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of If I Stay now has a beautiful new cover. Sisters in Sanity is a story of sisterhood and self-discovery that’s perfect for fans of Sarah Dessen, Morgan Matson, and Siobhan Vivian.
Britt Hemphill doesn’t know who she can trust. Her free-spirit mother has disappeared, and her father, once Britt’s partner in crime, has remarried and shipped her off to Red Rock, a so-called treatment facility for troubled girls. And the counselors at Red Rock? They’re completely insane. Britt’s horror at the “therapy”—vicious name-calling and grueling physical labor—is second only to her hatred for the backstabbing patients, who win privileges by ratting each other out.
But when V, Bebe, Martha, and Cassie, the four girls who keep Britt from going over the edge, help her sneak out to go see Jeb, her maybe-more-than-friends bandmate, she starts to believe that there may actually be people who can help her—and people that she can help by taking down Red Rocks. Sisters in Sanity perfectly captures the feeling of being trapped in a world that refuses to understand you—and fighting back.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Like a cross between Girl, Interrupted and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, journalist Forman's first book for teens tells the gritty tale of five girls trapped in a "residential treatment center" run by bogus shrinks or, as one of them aptly puts it, in "a loony bin, a bogus, bullshit, behavior-modification boot-camp warehouse for unwanted misfit teens." The narrator, Brit, thinks she's going on a family vacation; instead, her father dumps her behind the barbed-wire fences of Red Rocks, where she is told she has Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Although noticeably sluggish in the beginning (redundant descriptions of the scenery, the staff's abusive practices and the characters' pasts), the pace soon picks up as the girls scheme to shut the place down by taking matters into their own very capable hands. Each of the quintet is valiant in her own right, from Bebe, the famous actress's daughter who sleeps around, to Martha, the overweight loner who used to be a pageant winner, but Brit and V stand out for their ability to grow and eventually face their fears head-on. Brit's fledgling romance with Jed, a member of her hometown punk-rock band, is uncharacteristically sweet, and readers will root for its survival especially after Brit sneaks out of the compound to share a clandestine moment with him under the stars. This story line, however, takes a back seat to the expos -like preoccupation with debunking places like Red Rock, which, however engrossing, might be a case of preaching to the choir. Ages 12-up.
