Perfect

By: Natasha Friend

Narrated by: Danielle Ferland

First-time novelist Natasha Friend is a writer with a talent for realistically expressing the fears and uncertainties of today’s adolescents in a good story. Perfect has received the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature and is a Book Sense "Winter Picks" selection. This is the moving story of a young girl who develops a dangerous eating disorder while dealing with intense grief.

©2004 Natasha Friend (P)2005 Recorded Books

this book is really realistic, too realistic

this book is toxic to some people, i think it’s relatable. but it does teach people how to have this ED which is really bad.

passable time passer

I'd probably like this book more as a recovered bulimic with a dead dad. But I'm not that, so I didn't get much out of it. The disordered stuff didn't really ring true for me. The ending came, and instead of asking the questions it obviously wanted me to be asking, I was just like, "okay? FINALLY, I guess." Part of it is that it's likely out of my age demographic. Isabelle is 13, I'm 17, I'm not really gonna relate. Also the performance takes a while to get used to, it's entirely possible I'd actually like this book with a good reader, or even if I read it myself. I found the voice put on for some characters to be really grating, including the main character.

Also, reading the other reviews, this book is apparently bad for struggling kids! The main demographic! Like, I already knew the "tips" they gave, so I didn't think much of it, but yeah, probably a bad choice. I honestly wouldn't recommend this book to anyone I know.

Very good book

I picked this up because I have two daughters who are about to go to a new school and they're struggling with "who they'll be" at the new school. My oldest (12h is also going through the he "I'm so fat" stage even though she's very thin for her age and height. I just wanted to see what this book was all about so I read it and enjoyed it though don't think I'd let my kids read it (don't want to give them any ideas about how to become bulimic or anorexic though the store was so much more than that which really helped to balance out the whole story very nicely.

DO NOT LET YOUNG GIRLS READ

This book gives tips and advice about throwing up and makes it seem like it’ll immediately make you thin. I wasn’t insecure at all before reading, but after I genuinely dealt awful and it vividly describes how to throw up and tells you how. AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL

Good book, but WORST READER EVER!!!

This is a good book, but the reader, Danielle Ferland, is TERRIBLE!!!! Zero stars for performance!!! I can't even finish it. I made it about half an hour, divided into two days. I wish I could return it, but I've returned two books lately (the yearly limit is only two returns!), and I do like the story, so maybe I'll suffer through the reading at some point in the future? Anyway, I've decided that I will use the print copy to record myself reading it aloud so I can listen to it read in a reasonable way. (I listen to audiobooks while working out, otherwise I'd just read the book.)
Ferland, the reader of this audiobook is an old woman trying to put on a teenager voice, so she sounds squeaky, the way old women tend to talk when they think they're sounding young. That, I could handle, if it were only that. But Ferland also reads EVERY line as though she's cussing out somebody. No matter how mundane it is, like describing what someone is wearing, Ferland says it as though she's very over-dramatically trying to mean-girl the crap out of somebody. It's so unrealistic, so over-the-top, that it's not only annoying but it takes you out of the story, since every line of narration or teen/kid dialogue is exactly the same. But then, when she reads the dialogue of an adult, Ferland puts on the opposite kind of over-dramatic voice, a very sappy over-sensitive voice, which does not fit the dialogue at all. For example, when the mom tells the daughter that she likes A Separate Peace and would like to talk about the book with her, Ferland says it as though the mom is offering to discuss a a fatal diagnosis or something, super super over-sensitive that doesn't fit at all. Ferland very obviously hates teenagers and kids and wants listeners to view all teens and kids as spoiled obnoxious brats. Even as an adult I am offended at her portrayal of teens and kids. I work with teens and kids. I know what they're like. The reader of this book clearly has had zero interaction with teens or kids at any point in her life. Seriously, Ferland must've been home-schooled and then isolated in a cave somewhere and never met anyone under 18 in her entire life. Where on earth do they find these "readers" and why would they pick that old lady to read this book??!!!
The book itself is fine. It's only Ferland's reading that is bad.
I hope Audible will have this book re-read and replace this audiobook with a proper reading, just swap it out so we can listen to it read correctly. I wish I could return this, since Ferland makes it unlistenable. I've returned two books recently, which is the limit for a year, so I can't return this one.

This book is toxic

This book ruined my life when I was 14. Now, 30, I revisited it to see what I can remember. It is an instruction manual for how to be bulimic. The protagonist is friends with a girl described as having a perfect body, who everybody likes, with a whole drawer full of notes from boys, and she gets to eat absolutely every junk food imaginable and still keep it all. She teaches Isabelle that if you drink soda while you binge, it’s easier to purge. You can take laxatives. You won’t gain weight from bingeing and purging. It describes how many fingers to use and how far back in your throat to put them. It describes the girls getting away with purging at school. Disguising the sound of you purging by running the tap. This is all stuff a 14 year old doesn’t know. I copied what I read in the book and I still struggle with an eating disorder today. Obviously there are a lot of contributing factors, but mine started right here. I would NEVER let a young adult read this.