The Luckiest Girl in the World : A Young Skater Battles Her Self-Destructive Impulses

For the first third of this book, I was thinking to myself that it was written for concerned parents and teachers to give to girls who were cutting themselves. I didn't cut myself as a teenager (I did other stuff) but if I'd been given this book, I would have thought it was ultra-patronising and dumbed down so you wouldn't miss the point. I nearly put it down at this stage, but not having anything else light in the house to read over lunch I perservered, and I am so glad I did.

The author really knew his stuff, he knew about teenage girls, about the inner satisfaction of self-mutilation and just what group therapy is really all about, how it works. I would recommend it to anyone with a spare couple of hours and an interest in the show more subject, except for troubled adolescents, this would definitely make you look out-of-touch and uncool to give it to them. show less

I was expecting this book to be really cheesy, and it was in spots, but in general it was better than I expected. The descriptions of the mental process you go through were pretty spot-on for my experience (it might be different for other people, of course). I'm all for anything that increases awareness of self-injury, even if it's kind of cliched. I appreciated the fact that the ending admitted that it was something she would have to continue dealing with. A word of warning: there are a couple of scenes near the beginning that have the potential to be very triggering.

This book is about girls who have trouble socializing and making friends because of their pushy parents. I recommend people read this book if they self-mutilize themselves or people who are interested in people hurting themselves. This book will never want you to stop reading. For me I couldn't stop because my mind wanted to see what she was feeling. I could not because i have never and will never cut myself. If i knew that this book was about self-destruction then I wouldnt even have picked it up from the shelf. (192-192)