SKINNY

Unflinching and raw, this story of two sisters is powered by a frenetic energy that can’t be ignored. Swapping medical school for an eating-disorder clinic wasn’t 22-year-old Giselle’s plan, and her 14-year-old sister Holly didn’t see it coming either. Reading chapters that alternate between their distinct and sometimes startlingly aware voices, readers will be intimately imbedded in each sister’s mind as they each deal with Giselle’s disorder and the complicated family issues that their struggle unearths, especially regarding their deceased father and their parents’ earlier life in Hungary. Although brimming, sometimes to the point of nearly overflowing, with intense and masterful poetic imagery, this text and its heavy subject matter are presented with clarity and truth. Without blinking, Kaslik tackles lesbianism, drug abuse, suicide and other mature topics, making this text appropriate for older teens and college students. Brave and unique. (Fiction. YA)