Publisher: Penguin Teen
Series: None
Format: e-ARC
Source: Netgalley
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Abby Furlowe has plans. Big plans. She's hot, she's popular, she's a cheerleader and she's going to break out of her small Texas town and make it big. Fame and fortune, adoration and accolades. It'll all be hers.
But then she notices some spots on her skin. She writes them off as a rash, but things only get worse. She's tired all the time, her hands and feet are numb and her face starts to look like day-old pizza. By the time her seventeenth birthday rolls around, she's tried every cream and medication the doctors have thrown at her, but nothing works. When she falls doing a routine cheerleading stunt and slips into a coma, her mystery illness goes into overdrive and finally gets diagnosed: Hansen's Disease, aka leprosy.
Abby is sent to a facility to recover and deal with this new reality. Her many misdiagnoses mean that some permanent damage has been done, and all of her plans suddenly come tumbling down. If she can't even wear high heels anymore, what is the point of living? Cheerleading is out the window, and she might not even make it to prom. PROM!
But it's during this recovery that Abby has to learn to live with something even more difficult than Hansen's Disease. She's becoming aware of who she really was before and what her behavior was doing to others; now she's on the other side of the fence looking in, and she doesn't like what she sees. . .
**Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Teen for granting me access to this title in exchange for an honest review.**
Typically, YA Contemporaries will have the same plot: pretty mean girl suffers from some traumatic event and eventually realizes that there is more to life than being beautiful. Does this story follow the same concept? Yes, but it's done in a unique way with the traumatic incident being Leprosy.
Abby is a popular mean girl at school who has her two best friends by her side as she goes through her senior year. All she wants to do is go to USC on a cheerleading scholarship. She starts dating a terrible guy just because he's hot and on the basketball team, and then is surprised when he dumps her because she's too mean. Abby and her friends have bitch fests in the cafeteria where the criticize their classmates who walk by.
She also has a brother who has a secret life. They are not friendly towards each other at all and I would honestly say that they can't even stand each other. But when an emergency happens, Abby is there for Dean and says she will keep his secrets for him. Their relationship is still strained, but better. It is definitely very complicated.
Once her diagnosis is confirmed, everyone around her except for her family basically distances themselves from her. Her so called "best friends" completely cut her out of their lives because she's not pretty enough to be around them. I thought that was really terrible and shows what kind of people she was friends with. Abby has to be sent to a facility where they are equipped to care for her, and it's there where she truly learns what is important in life.
I really enjoyed Abby's time in Carterville at the treatment facility. She learns that she's not alone and that all hope is not lost for her future. Her characterization was so well done from beginning to end. She really went from a shallow mean girl to someone who cared more about those around her.
But the most informative part of the book for me was learning about Hansen's disease. Honestly, I had no idea leprosy still existed in the United States, but 5% of the population is apparently at risk for it.
Wow this sounds like something I have not read before! Will add it to my TBR. Great review :)
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