Sarah is pretty invisible at school. Her friend Amanda is a size zero and probably suffering from anorexia or bulimia, and her friend Gina stopped being nice to her when a guy Gina liked showed a preference for Sarah. And then there’s Derek, the cute boy Sarah’s crushing on from afar. Sarah’s always been a straight A student, sung in choir but never had a solo, and never did anything to get herself noticed. But then she runs into Robin one night at a party when she goes back to get her jacket, and Robin’s trying it on. Robin and Sarah topple the tiki torches on the lawn over, burning holes in the grass. Slowly, Sarah starts wearing more and more black. She picks up smoking from Robin, and turns to ask Robin’s input before every decision. Her other friends start to fade into the background of SarahAndRobin. Until the day of the SAT test. The day Robin’s mom tells Sarah Robin’s not feeling well and to go to the test without her. The day Robin goes into the bathroom with a bottle of pills, a glass of water, and a razor blade, and gets into the tub.
Things Left Unsaid is a novel in verse, which means the whole book is a collection of poems. It won the 2006 Myra Cohn Livingston Award for Excellence in Poetry by the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California. Stephanie Hemphill is also known for Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath, and the forthcoming Wicked Girls: A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials.
Review by Kathleen
hamiltonteens
