Book Review: Skinny by Ibi Kaslik

Skinny
Ibi Kaslik
Genre(s): young adult, realistic fiction, contemporary
Published: December 26th 2007
Pages: 244
Rating: 3 stars

“Holly’s older sister, Giselle, is self-destructing. Haunted by her love-deprived relationship with her late father, this once strong role model and medical student, is gripped by anorexia. Holly, a track star, struggles to keep her own life in balance while coping with the mental and physical deterioration of her beloved sister. Together, they can feel themselves slipping and are holding on for dear life. ”

Skinny is not what I expected.

Holly and Giselle's stories were good, well developed and fairly believable  The book itself was well written and rather enjoyable once I started reading. But it took me forever to get through and I just felt... disappointed.

The main problem I had with it was, together, the stories didn't really go. I liked reading about Giselle and Holly separately, but together they annoyed me. 

I also found the title a little misleading, as even though Giselle does talk about her eating disorder, I felt like it wasn't the main focus of the story and the title, Skinny, makes you think it is. Although, it is mentioned and brought up quite a bit in the second part of the book, you just have to get through all the other, unrelated stuff in the first part.

It's not that Skinny is a bad book, or that I didn't like it, it's that I don't think I was in the right place personally as I was reading it. Maybe I'll revisit it in the future and get more from it, but for now, I'm just a little let down.