2017 Debut Authors Bash with Giveaway - Featuring Alexandra Ballard Talking about Her Inspiration and Research for Her Debut Novel: What I Lost #17DABash

I'm participating in this fun yearly event once again hosted by YA Reads.  I'm lucky enough to be posting about two authors this year, so make sure to check back later this month for another fun post.  I read What I Lost this past summer, and you can check out my review of it HERE.

Book info:
Title:  What I Lost
Author:  Alexandra Ballard
Genre:  YA Contemporary, Eating disorders, Anorexia
Release Date:  June 6th, 2017
Publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Pages: 304
Formats:  Hardcover, ebook 

Synopsis:
What sixteen-year-old Elizabeth has lost so far: forty pounds, four jean sizes, a boyfriend, and her peace of mind. As a result, she’s finally a size zero. She’s also the newest resident at Wallingfield, a treatment center for girls like her—girls with eating disorders. Elizabeth is determined to endure the program so she can go back home, where she plans to start restricting her food intake again.She’s pretty sure her mom, who has her own size-zero obsession, needs treatment as much as she does. Maybe even more. Then Elizabeth begins receiving mysterious packages. Are they from her ex-boyfriend, a secret admirer, or someone playing a cruel trick?

 

This eloquent debut novel rings with authenticity as it follows Elizabeth’s journey to taking an active role in her recovery, hoping to get back all that she lost.

Find it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble. The Book Depository, iBooks, Goodreads


For this post I've got some great information to share with you from the author.  I asked her where she got her inspiration for What I Lost, as well as what kind of research was needed for a book on the serious topic of eating disorders.  Here is what she had to say:

Back in 2012, I joined a writing group and sat down to write, seriously, for the first time. I'd just left my job as a middle school teacher and had this vague idea that I might try to fulfill a dream I'd had since I was a little girl--to publish a book. I had no idea what stories, if any, would come out of me. All I wanted to do was write--something, anything. And for a few weeks, I did just that. I wrote about my life, my kids, my husband. And then, slowly, a voice started to form. It was my main character, 16-year-old Elizabeth, a typical American teenager who was screwing up her life in a big way. She shoplifted from Target, inadvertently gave her friends’ secrets away, constantly fought with her parents, and was, in general, miserable. It wasn’t until a few weeks in did I realize what was really going on with her. She had an eating disorder (ED), like I had years ago, and it was getting worse.

Over time, I realized that the heart of the story wasn’t with Elizabeth’s antics at school or with her friends. It was with her illness and the people she met when she was forced to get help at an inpatient treatment facility I named Wallingfield. That’s when WHAT I LOST was really born.

While the events and characters in the book are all fictional, many of the emotions and feelings (especially towards ranch dressing!) came from the heart.

That said, I still did quite a bit of research not only on anorexia, but also how to treat it. I studied up on everything from what a patient eats at a facility like Wallingfield, to how group therapy sessions are run, to the medical complications, to the latest genetic research, to how to portray EDs responsibly when writing. I spoke to therapists and tried my best to make sure I represented the disease in a realistic, responsible light.

One element that was extremely important to me was that my book do no harm. There are all sorts of guidelines online on how to write responsibly about anorexia. The last thing I wanted was for my book to be able to be used as a how-to guide to not eat, but at the same time, I wanted my novel to be specific and real. I did my best to carefully balance what details and behaviors I included so that readers would get a clear picture of the disease while also not including so much that anybody with an eating disorder would come away with new techniques and tips for restricting his or her food intake. I did have to include some details, like specific weights and meals, so that the reader could accurately picture the characters, but I did so as sparingly as I could.

When I finished writing WHAT I LOST, I realized that this book had been burning a hole inside me, waiting to come out for a long time. That’s what is so fascinating about writing--it’s like a portal into the inner workings of your mind. Maybe that’s why I love it so much. It continually surprises me. I didn’t sit down to write a book about a girl in an ED treatment center, but that’s the story I needed to tell, and so I did, and I am thankful every day for Elizabeth and the rest of the cast of characters in my book. They made me a better person and writer.

About the Author: 

Alexandra Ballard has worked as a magazine editor, middle-school English teacher, freelance writer, and cake maker. She holds master's from both Columbia (journalism) and Fordham (education) and spent ten years in the classroom, beginning in the Bronx and ending up in the hills of California. Today she writes full time and lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. What I Lost is Alexandra's first novel.
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram

Giveaway:

• 1 copy of What I Lost - open to US and Canada

  a Rafflecopter giveaway

Blog Tour with Review and Giveway: What I Lost by Alexandra Ballard

Book info:

Title:  What I Lost
Author:  Alexandra Ballard
Genre:  YA Contemporary, Eating disorders, Anorexia
Release Date:  June 6th, 2017
Publisher:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)

Pages: 304
Formats:  Hardcover, ebook
Source:  E-galley from Publisher

Synopsis:

What sixteen-year-old Elizabeth has lost so far: forty pounds, four jean sizes, a boyfriend, and her peace of mind. As a result, she’s finally a size zero. She’s also the newest resident at Wallingfield, a treatment center for girls like her—girls with eating disorders. Elizabeth is determined to endure the program so she can go back home, where she plans to start restricting her food intake again.She’s pretty sure her mom, who has her own size-zero obsession, needs treatment as much as she does. Maybe even more. Then Elizabeth begins receiving mysterious packages. Are they from her ex-boyfriend, a secret admirer, or someone playing a cruel trick?

This eloquent debut novel rings with authenticity as it follows Elizabeth’s journey to taking an active role in her recovery, hoping to get back all that she lost.

Find it: Amazon, Barnes and Noble. The Book Depository, iBooks, Goodreads   

My Review:

If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know that I tend to read books about eating disorders.  The reason for that is because I always feel a little connection.  I am in no way claiming to have an actual eating disorder.  What I am saying is that I can feel the same types of feelings that the characters in these books share.  While I am pretty much able to control myself so that I don't go down those paths, or maybe just my personality doesn't let me go that way, when I read these stories, I feel emotionally for these girls.  I can see how easy it is to slip into the habits and lifestyles that they do.  I'm pretty sure that I, like probably many girls/other people, have a distorted body image.  I remember when I was at what is an ideal weight for my height, and how I still would feel that I had a stomach bulge, something that while I can go look at pictures now and see there wasn't any such thing, I still remember looking in the mirror and seeing it.  Even today when I look at pictures of myself, or catch myself in a mirror, I can see something that I know is not right or maybe I think it looks better than it does when I see myself in a picture.  I don't know, enough about me probably.  Let's just say that I read this type of book because it helps me look in and take a look at what I am thinking.

I feel like this story was very realistic, yet had what a good story can have, a happy, yet realistically happy ending.  All the things that Elizabeth went through were so real.  She didn't go in and just follow all the rules and get better.  She didn't just have a bunch of people around her that were inspiring and perfect.  When other girls may have gotten to leave the clinic, they slipped, they returned, and as they had done before, during and after their time at the clinic, they lied.  So did Elizabeth, even when it seemed she was going to be ready to go back out and try on her own in the real world, she slipped.  But I like that she had real parents in the story.  Parents that made their own mistakes.  They loved her, they were supportive, but didn't necessarily know how to do what needed to be done.  To see that maybe it was something in her family life that maybe helped push her in the direction she went in order to end up where she was.  The fact that even back in her parents' past could also have contributed to this whole situation was also very telling.  While it is so easy to blame the bullies, to blame parents for what they've done, it is always also important to look just at what may be the cause of why they behave the way they do.  Believe me, I am NOT saying any kind of bullying or bad parenting is okay, I'm saying that looking at why those things happen could be exactly what could help in the end.  If those people are willing to help themselves and get better.

I could write a very long review about this.  I guess these days I should probably say something about possible triggers in here for people with eating issues.  But I feel the author did a good job with them.  Didn't gloss over, make them look silly and easy to overcome.  This is another great book to share about this topic.  And the romance in here?  Also a perfect and pretty realistic one for me.  It was not what you thought. Although I did get a little inkling when we first got a clue that it wasn't who Elizabeth had assumed sending the anonymous gifts.  The book touches on social media issues, as well as looks at just how hard it is for not only the person dealing with the issue to talk about it, but also for how hard it is to be a friend and not know how to deal with it.  Great, great story.  Definitely will be purchasing for the school library where I work. 

About the Author:

  Alexandra Ballard has worked as a magazine editor, middle-school English teacher, freelance writer, and cake maker. She holds master's from both Columbia (journalism) and Fordham (education) and spent ten years in the classroom, beginning in the Bronx and ending up in the hills of California. Today she writes full time and lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. What I Lost is Alexandra's first novel.  


  Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram  









Giveaway:

3 winners will receive a finished copy of WHAT I LOST, US Only
     a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

-->

Week One:

5/29/2017-YA and Wine- Interview

5/30/2017- Take Me Away To A Great Read- Review

5/31/2017- BookHounds YA- Guest Post

6/1/2017- Here's to Happy Endings- Review

6/2/2017- Eli to the nth- Excerpt

Week Two:

6/5/2017- Lisa Loves Literature- Review

6/6/2017- YA Book Madness- Guest Post

6/7/2017- The Cover Contessa- Interview

6/8/2017- Book Briefs- Review

6/9/2017- A Gingerly Review- Review

  

Review: Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle and Clare B. Dunkle

First, thanks to Edelweiss and Chronicle Books for allowing me to read an egalley of this title.  This is a hard book to review.  It was definitely a very interesting read,  but still a hard one to read.  I always want to read books about eating disorders or weight loss memoirs because I feel like they are something I can relate to, or else just something I need to read.  And while no one will ever accuse me of being anorexic, and I could never be because I like to eat, it was scary to realize that some of the things the author thought are very similar to things I think without realizing.

Elena is the author and the main character of the book.  The story is about her life with an eating disorder, anorexia to be specific.  And while she'd really had it before the first part of the book, we kind of start up from the time when someone first points out to her and her family that might be what it is.  It starts when her health first begins to truly suffer, with a heart problem.  She is able to fight the diagnosis of anorexia, at one of the hospitals they even say something like she weighs too much for what they usually take for that program.  What gets to me is how she doesn't eat.  I can't skip meals very often because I get a headache, that gets worse as I go longer without eating.  And then I get nauseated, so much that it is hard to eat to cure the headache which led to the nausea.  While Elena doesn't really have bulimia, there are times that when she is made to eat she does throw up. But she knows how to do it without ruining her teeth, something she is proud of when she hears another girl throwing up in the bathroom at one point.  I can't imagine being as horrible about something as she is.  I can't imagine not wanting help.  But again, I don't have the same issue she has.

As someone who is always conscious about weight and what I look like these days, there were times when her inner voice was very familiar to me.  The thought that when she walked away people were talking about her, calling her fat, or ugly, or something along those lines.  I know that it isn't really a voice to me like it was to her, but I know I have those thoughts about what girls that I walk by think of me, or guys, even people I know I often think they're probably thinking things about me.   So that is what made it hard to read.

I do know that I now want to read the mother's kind of alternate point of view in her own book called Hope and Other Luxuries:  A Mother's Life With a Daughter's Anorexia.  From reading and hearing how her mother acted, and knowing that Elena totally had to be misinterpreting things, I just need to read the mother's side.  The mother's name may be familiar to readers as she is a writer.  I've even read her Hollow Kingdom series and enjoyed it.

So while I do recommend the book if you want to read about the struggles of someone with anorexia, I do warn you to be prepared for how hard it is to read.  How many times you just want to shake Elena and tell her to try, stop giving in to it!  Even when I found out what began it, and you understand why that caused it when she talks through it with the counselors at the end of the book, I still wanted her to just try.  I'm not putting what happened to her down as nothing big, as I also had something similar happen to me, only when I was much older.  But a good, hard read, and when you know how her family had had to deal with her older sister even before she started having the problems, you can see how it all kind of snowballed into such a giant deal.  

Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler

Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I actually really liked this book. I think the subject of anorexia is one that is very overlooked sometimes. I liked the irony in a girl who was anorexic being in charge of famine. I liked that the other riders, Death, War, and Pestilence, were portrayed in a somewhat different way than you normally see. I like the choice that Famine was given. This book did speak to me personally, not that I'm anorexic, but that I struggle with weight, and I understand the feeling of looking in the mirror, and what you see is not what others see. There are times I leave my home and I thought what I put on looked good in my mirror. Then I get to school and walk by a window and see my reflection and hate how fat I look. Or I'm somewhere like a party, in an outfit I planned and thought made me look really good, then I see a picture later and think wow, how fat I really am, and why don't I see that in the mirror when I look. And then other people will say how good I look, and I don't think I look like that. For a long time, when I was younger, I never understood how anorexics could look in a mirror and feel fat, when all I saw was barely any person there. But now that I can't trust my own eyes when I look in a mirror, I get it. And I think this book showcases that very well. I like that at the end it isn't just easy for her to begin eating and be normal. She thinks she can, but soon that "thin voice" is back in her head telling her how many calories, or minutes exercising each food will cost her. And making her feel guilty for even thinking of eating one french fry.

I look forward to reading the next one in the series, Rage. This was a quick read, as it is a short book, and I think there could probably have been more detail to flesh the story out and make it last a bit longer if there was anything that wasn't perfect about the book, that's it.



View all my reviews

The Hazards of Working at a Bookstore Vol. 3.2 Part 2

This is the 2nd part to my regular posts about the books I see when working at the bookstore that I want to read. As I said in part 1, this is actually a couple weeks' worth of books, so this part will be the 6 teen books on my lists.
First is Between by Jessica Warman. This is a ghost story, but with a realistic fiction slant of anorexia. The main character is Elizabeth, who is a popular girl. She wakes up after a party to find her body drowned in a swimming pool. She meets another ghost, a boy named Alex, who died in a hit and run accident. Together they try to figure out what happened to her, and they learn that no one in her group, including herself, can be called completely innocent in this death and situation.












Second is Juliet Immortal by Stacey Jay. It turns out we have the whole story wrong. Juliet didn't kill herself, she was murdered by Romeo. He made her a sacrifice so that he could be immortal. But Juliet was granted immortality as well. She's spent the last 700 years fighting for true love against those that Romeo would destroy. Until, of course, she finds someone she wants to love, but can't, and now Romeo is working to destroy her love.














Third is Tankborn by Karen Sandler. Now I'm excited to say I was able to get this as an e-galley on Netgalley, so I will get to read it soon! It is a sci fi book, about genetics, which I am intrigued by. Kayla and Mishalla are best friends, they also are GENS, Genetically engineered non humans. They were gestated in a tank, then raised in slums, and at the age of 15 sent to work as slaves. They are the lowest of all beings. Kayla goes to work for a trueborn, or highest of all begins. Mishalla goes and works for children who are disappearing in the night. When they happen to meet up again, they decide they must figure out where these children are disappearing to because Mishalla has a feeling something horrible is happening to them.






Fourth is The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab. The Near Witch is an old story told to frighten children. Or at least that is what Lexi believes until a boy that no one knows shows up one night outside her home. Another saying the village has is that there are no strangers. The night after he shows up, children start disappearing. Sounds like a good mystery, and is described as part fairy tale, part love story. Another that I'm anxious to read!














Fifth is The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills by Joanna Pearson. The main character is Janice Wills, and she is really into anthropology. She figures you can learn a lot just by knowing basic anthropologic theories. Like how dancing can be a good mating ritual, if you're good at it. Janice is a smart girl, and so isn't used to hot guys talking to her, until it happens, and then she must become a part of the group of people that she's been making her observations about.














And finally, the last teen book for this post is The Twin's Daughter by Lauren Baratz-Logsted. The main character is Lucy, and one day a woman shows up at her doorstep who is identical to her mother. Turns out her mother has an identical twin that she was separated from at birth, and both grew up in totally different environments. Lucy's mother decides to give her sister the life she didn't have growing up. But soon Lucy has trouble telling the two apart, and is unsure what exactly this twin is after.
Tomorrow, or later tonight maybe, I'll blog the 6 adult books on my list.