Girl in Pieces

By: Kathleen Glasgow
Location: FIC GLA
Genre: Young adult- Mental health

Some books you just know are not going to make you smile, they are designed to make you feel, to have empathy, to open the brokenness of others into you soul.
Like this one..
The themes are pretty heavey it includes depression, suicide, self-harm, alcoholism, sexual abuse, and addiction. Charlie was living on the streets, nearly sold into a sex house, before she attempted suicide by cutting. It's her journey. It's equal parts about recovery and decline. It's not a pretty story.

“Everyone has that moment I think, the moment when something so momentous happens that it rips your very being into small pieces. And then you have to stop. For a long time, you gather your pieces. And it takes such a very long time, not to fit them back together, but to assemble them in a new way, not necessarily a better way. More, a way you can live with until you know for certain that this piece should go there, and that one there.”

Charlotte Davis is in pieces. At seventeen she’s already lost more than most people lose in a lifetime. But she’s learned how to forget. The thick glass of a mason jar cuts deep, and the pain washes away the sorrow until there is nothing but calm. You don’t have to think about your father and the river. Your best friend, who is gone forever. Or your mother, who has nothing left to give you.

Every new scar hardens Charlie’s heart just a little more, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts enough to not care anymore, which is sometimes what has to happen before you can find your way back from the edge.

Maggie Stiefvater reviews it this way- on Goodreads.com

Although this book tells a story of people being cruel to themselves, it is a book about being gentle with yourself. It seems odd to call this novel kind, as it was often a savage read (it is unflinching in its portrayal of self-harm, homelessness, addiction, and desperation) but it has such a sweet heart, such a piercing desire for its characters to improve themselves in every way, that hope persists in even the darkest moments. Glasgow's use of adult characters to challenge, support, and mirror the teen characters is genuinely inspired, and the resulting fictional neighborhood dynamic felt intensely real. In general, the characters are wonderfully drawn, and although this novel is nothing like Code Name Verity, I think I might recommend it to folks who enjoyed that one. Girl in Pieces prioritizes characters and their complicated truths in a similar way. I'd probably recommend this one for older teens and adults who read YA, not because I believe in shielding kids from content, but because the characters in this novel make nuanced and morally gray decisions that might render them unlikable to a less experienced soul. I know I would have judged the narrator more harshly at 13 than at 18, and that would have been a shame.

This one earns a place on my keeper shelf. Will instantly pick up whatever Glasgow puts out next