Thursday, September 3, 2015

Hyacinth Girls



This debut novel is one that should be read by anyone who deals with teenage girls on a daily basis - parents, teachers, etc.  Lauren Frankel gives the reader a look inside bullying, from several perspectives.

Rebecca is a young woman who has taken on the responsibility of raising the daughter of her deceased best friend.  Rebecca has striven to shower Callie with all the love she deserves as well as sought to keep her mother's memory alive.  She has even made the decision to postpone her own love life until Callie no longer needs her.  So Rebecca is shocked to receive a call from the school principal telling her that Callie has been terrorizing a classmate.  Callie and her friends deny the incident and tell a completely different story about the other girl.  They tell Rebecca that Robyn was obsessed with Callie and paint a picture of a depressed and troubled girl.  But even after Callie is exonerated, Rebecca wonders if it is the entire truth.  

The novel begins from Rebecca's point of view before switching to Callie's.  The reader has the chance to experience the bully and bullying from a parent's and a teenager's perspectives. Rebecca has kept some truths about her parents from Callie that are soon unearthed.  It is a thrilling story that builds until the very end and tells the tale of two troubled girls who set of a chain reaction that leads to danger.  Filled with text messages, emails and facebook pages that tell the story of how quickly one can fall in this new world of technology.

Every parent will read this with a sense of fear.  As Rebecca asks in the prologue: "Do you know your children?"

For more information about this debut author please visit the publisher's website.

 "I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."