This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales

Wednesday, April 16, 2014


Title : This Song Will Save Your Life
Author : Leila Sales
Genre : Contemporary
Published Date : September 17th 2013

Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Pages : 279
Source : Bought

From Goodreads :
Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Told in a refreshingly genuine and laugh-out-loud funny voice, THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is an exuberant novel about identity, friendship, and the power of music to bring people together.

Review

When it first came out, this book received so many attention on the blogosphere. But I'm not really interested at it at that time, because well, music is not my thing.
And the first time I actually am curious this book, it's from one of my friend in blogosphere (Cue to you, Kezia :D), saying about how much she loved it and all. And since our taste is similar, I said to myself, well why not?
And turns out, this one is a piece of amazing.

"Because throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn’t that—just you—enough?"
—Elise

This book was told from a perspective of Elise Dembowski, high-school-freak-slash-loser who tried her best to remove that label from herself. To make herself feel worthy enough. Good enough.
And I really love that this book managed to captured that raw emotion so beautifully, and it really connect with the real world and the real peer pressure. The writing was also light but still thoughtful, and it has managed to make me devour it on one sitting.


The characters were all great and very well-developed too. 
Elise as the main character had this unique personality, and it's lovely to see her living up to this until the very end, that even the condition changes, she doesn't. And the way she behaved is believably weird, and maybe if you read it, you could say like "Wow, this girl is exaggerating everything", but I see it with my teenage's eye, and her action was like, weird but just how I expected a socially-awkward teen to behave. And another plus point is that both her parents are pretty much alive and existing, not just questionably absent like soo many YA novels out there.

The side characters also had its different role too, all with their own issues and their own personality. And even the assholes did has his own issue for doing things, and making it perfectly sensible, while being still unacceptable. And if it's not an amazing balance, I honestly don't know what is.

Overall, I think this book really succeed in tackling the issue of bullying and overwhelming peer pressure and identity crisis in teenager. Completed with powerful characters and fun but straight-to-the-heart writing, I truly recommended this book.

Cheers, x
NK

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8 comments

  1. This was one of my favourite reads of 2013, so I'm glad to see you loved it too! You're right, Sales really did capture the raw emotion and teenage experience so, so well.

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  2. ah wow I passed up on it because I don't read a lot of books with music either but it sounds like the writer captured a teenager well - probably a book a lot can relate to.

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    Replies
    1. Yep, it definitely is! I don't really like music too, mainly because I sucks playing any kind of musical instruments, but this bok is so much more than just music. It's self discovery and all. You'll love it! :)

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  3. I have seen this one around the book blog world, and I have yet to find someone who didn't like it! I cannot wait to read it. Great review :)

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    Replies
    1. Yep, I kinda picked it up because of the hype too, plus a friend's recommendation :D

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  4. This book contained so many recognizable things for me. It was a very emotional read and I wish there were more books out there focusing on bullying - in the hope that it could reach more people and make more people aware of the effect it has on someone's life. The GIF definitely sums up how I felt about this book, haha.

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