Mark This Book Monday: This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales!!

I'm starting this week's Mark This Book Monday with what has to be one of my fave reads of the month so far! And saying that when the book is a contemporary, is quite saying something for me!


This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is the kind of book that I would recommend to everyone and anyone. It's the kind of book that kept me up till I finished it at 4 am and I finished reading it on my phone's Kindle app when my tablet run out of battery.

I'm not a big fan of contemporary books, but when the book is as good as this one, feels as real as this one, I completely forget about my reservations about the genre.

Elise is a girl that has never been popular, a girl that has always been different and has always been ostracized by her peers. She's tried to be herself and go on through school, middle school to high school but one summer she decides to try and change herself and be popular in the next year of HS. She watches shows, she reads teen magazines... she makes such an effort to try and learn how to fit it, how to change and be like others and not like she is... but it fails and she just doesn't know what else to do. Recovering from her choices that alienate her even more, she stumbles upon a world she didn't know it existed and finds herself making friends with some other very interesting characters like Char, Pippa, Vicky...

Elise is a wonderful character, so full of life, so real and so easy to relate with. You might not agree with some of her choices, but you just can't help but totally understand where she is coming from, and understand how she ends up making the choices that she does. She's intelligent, strong, funny and loves music.

It is such a raw book, all the interactions with the characters, the high school setting, it all feels so real, not just the usual cliches, but situations that feel real enough. The relationships between Elise and her peers, Elise and her two familes and Elise and her new friends and her first romance... it all feels real, it all feels relatable and all the characters have depth, flaws and great qualities. All contribute one way or another to Elise journey in this book, her journey to learn who she is, accept who she is, and find a way to be proud of who she is and accept that she can be loved and have friends and not boycott herself with her own doubts.

It is not a fluffy book, it is a tough book to read on occasions, even more if you, like me, connect with Elise and her journey, but it is a book that despite the hard bits will leave with you a smile, and not just a small smile, but the smile that comes from inside and warms you up. It's not just a song that saves a life, music is almost a character in itself in this book, whenever a song was mention I played it in my head if I knew it and if not, I made a note to look for it later in YouTube... There should be a playlist there with all the fantastic music from this book.

A very well deserved 5 stars!



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