Looks by Madeleine George.

Released June 2008.

Meghan is an enormous girl who spends her lonely days in high school virtually invisible, except when she is mercilessly tormented by a group of the popular jocks.  Because she is often overlooked, she knows things about almost everyone at school.  That’s why she is intrigued when Aimee starts school.  Aimee is stick thin and struggling with an eating disorder and has no interest in being friends with Meghan who can’t manage to talk coherently when she approaches her.  When both girls are betrayed by the same person, they haltingly start a friendship for revenge.

The language of this book is pure poetry.  I know that is something often said about prose, but in this case it is entirely true.  Here is a paragraph from Page 12 of the novel to demonstrate:

Here in the dark she disappears completely, her body dissolves, but every one of her senses sharpens: vision, scent, memory, hearing.  Meghan tilts her head toward the door and curves her whole self into a listening device.  She wakes up every sleeping cell in her body to listen.  She makes her skin listen, she makes her eyelashes listen.  She stills her breath, lets it in and out of her lungs in faint wisps.  She listens so hard she feels her heartbeat slow.

The book is like that, taking you so deeply into characters, exposing them, looking beyond the surface to the people they are inside with all of their fascinating drives, needs and fears.  In doing this, neither of the main characters can possibly be stereotypical.  Meghan is seen as dainty at times, graceful, lovely.  Aimee as sharp in voice and in spirit.  Both as cautious kindred spirits brought together by far more than betrayal and revenge. 

There are so many layers here to immerse readers.  This is a book that celebrates unique people, lingers in painful moments, displays beauty where none seemed to exist.  It is a book that sings in tribute of these two disparate but similar characters.  It is a wonder of a teen novel. 

Highly recommended, this book will find those who will relate to it by the great cover.  Hand this one to teens who go their own way and they will find two characters to revel in and one amazing novel to call their own.