This Song Will Save Your Life: A Novel

Wow, I loved this book. If you've ever felt like you don't fit in, or that no one understands who you really are, this book is for you. Elise Dembowski has never quite gotten it right, socially speaking. Deemed a social misfit through no real fault of her own (except she's driven to try to hard), she's never really had any friends, and she's been the butt of every joke. Ostracized in every way, she has always turned to music for comfort, feeling secure with her headphones on and music playing. "I was born to be unpopular. There was no other way it could have gone." The summer before her sophomore year of high school, she is determined that this year will be different. She spends the entire summer studying the latest trends, the latest gossip about fashion, celebrities, and music, and spends more money than she'd like on trendier clothes. Yet when the first day of school arrives, she's virtually ignored by her classmates, and it becomes too much to bear. "They will still see past that, see you, the girl who is still too scared, still too smart for her own good, still a beat behind, still, always, wrong. Change all you want; you can't change that. I know because I tried." Nearly at the end of her rope, one night she accidentally discovers Start, an underground dance party. No one there knows her, and, more importantly, the people she meets seem to like her. Before long she is sneaking out of her mother's house every Thursday night to attend Start, and starts to develop some friendships—with Vicky, the confident singer who knows all too well what Elise has gone through; Pippa, a confident, cocky English girl and Vicky's best friend; and Char, a cute DJ who takes Elise under his wing. It is at Start that Elise starts to blossom and feel more confident. Even though the rest of her life continues in the same fashion it always has, at Start, she is accepted, because no one knows the way she has been treated all these years. Char teaches her how to DJ, and she takes a shine to it—and to Char. But of course, she begins to realize that finally being accepted, finding friends as well as something that you love to do all comes with a price, and rules you never realized you had to be mindful of. And once again, Elise struggles with the isolation of high school and feeling like no one truly knows or understands the real her. I thought this was pretty excellent. I certainly identified with some of the feelings Elise had and understood her isolation, loneliness, and lack of self-worth, so the story really resonated for me. The characters were clever and complex without being stereotypical teens, and they weren't too quirky—everything that happened was completely believable. Leila Sales really did a great job hooking me almost instantaneously on Elise's story, and I read the entire book in a little more than a day. (Of course, I was sad once I finished, because I could have spent more time with these characters.) This Song Will Save Your Life is another example of how excellent the young adult genre is these days. I never once felt like the book was below my comprehension level, and it didn't seem necessarily geared to a younger reader. If you know how Elise felt, you'll be moved by this book. So glad I read it. While this book didn't save my life, it impacted me, even in a small way.

In high school, I was very similar to Elise. I was the weird, quiet girl in the back who read novels when she was supposed to be studying, and got in trouble for crocheting in class. I spent my lunches in the library most days. I didn't *want* to be alone, though.I desperately wanted to fit in, to be accepted, to belong. I dreamt of having a gaggle of girlfriends to gossip with over lunch and a boyfriend to cuddle and kiss and go on fun dates with. So from the first page of This Song Will Save Your Life, I felt like I was looking into a mirror to my past, and it definitely hurt. Unlike Elise, I did manage to keep one friend in high school, and I truly believe that we saved each other from a very dark fate. Elise doesn't even have that, however. Everyone picks on her, hates her, and basically treats her like s***. She basically spends the summer studying how to fit in--what kind of clothes to wear, what celebrities the cool girls talk about, how to do her hair and makeup "the right way". It backfires the first day back to school--she realizes that by trying to study up on what cool kids do, she's already turned herself into the awkward outsider once again. So after an awful lunch with the so-called "nice girls" who still exclude her and leave her to pick up all their trash, she decides to go home and kill herself. This first scene really resonated with me. A lot of the time, there isn't one big thing that makes someone want to die. It's all the little things, the ones that build and build on each other until that last straw--the one that breaks the camel's back, so to speak--finally pushes you over the edge. I truly felt for Elise. To me, she felt more like a real teen than alot of other novels I've read lately. I just wanted to reach in and give her a hug. I loved her transformation over the course of the book. Her love of music and DJing is what helps her open up and finally make some friends that love her for who she really is, not who she's pretending to be. There were a couple things that bugged me--I didn't like the way she treated her dad or her little sister-- but they still seemed like a true teen reaction to me. Also, I had a hard time believing a girl so young was able to get in to Start without once showing her ID. I also didn't care for Char much, but I think that was intentional. However, none of that took away from my enjoyment of the story and watching Elise finally embrace who she is. This Song Will Save Your Life is a powerful novel, and I think it could give hope to those out there like me, the ones who've always felt like they didn't quite belong.

This isn't a kind of book that will keep you at the edge of your seat, or keep surprising you with plot twists; it's just a simple story about a girl who has never been popular in her life, does all the silly things teenagers does-some quite serious,too, but somehow it also inspires you and manages to leave a very strong impression. This is my second book by the author, and the thing I love most about her books is how well crafted and flawed her characters are that even such simple story could mean so much. Her simplistic writing and the way she handles such serious issues like bullying and suicide takes her books to the another level. This book is from a perspective of Elise, who has never been famous in her life, has always been kind of a person who sits away from the 'cool' group, and not because she doesn't like them, because she feels like she could never fit in that cool group. The first half is basically Elise trying to become one of the cool kids, and for that she even had a list of things she was supposed to do. She also attempts suicide, just to get attention. And while I do not agree with that sort of thing, or in any way can come up with an excuse for her behavior-because it's just wrong, I've also heard about real life incidents like these around me, so as stupid as may sounds, people actually do this. But that didn't stop me from loving the book, because thankfully, that was only a small part of the book, and the rest of the book is actually very interesting and fun when we get to know about this underground Dj party, which in some way changes Elise's life. The other issue in this book was bullying. When Elise was trying to build a new life with music, there was also something going on in her life that just didn't fit and made her life much more difficult. She was bullied constantly, and even though she said things she wasn't supposed to, I could actually relate to her. I wasn't bullied in high school, but I also wasn't the person anyone would consider to be fun and would hang out with. I was the kid who sat alone with few of her friends and just noticed people around her doing fun things which she wasn't able to do. So in that matter, this book really did touched me more than I could have imagined. And even the end of the book was somehow very similar to my life which just made this book more special. Then there were secondary characters who made this book more fun to read. I loved Elise's family and her cute siblings, her bitchy and supportive friends, and yes, I also loved Char. Okay, not so much at the end, but overall I really liked his character. It was really nice to see how Elise realized at the end who her real friends were and how she was wrong about so many things in her life. Elise also had the habit of judging people without even listening to them, and that I think ruined many things on the way- because she won't believe anyone. The characters I will remember most are VIkki, Harry, Mel, and Char. There were also some characters whom I actually started liking at the end, when everything was sorted out. I also like how this book had a bit of mystery going on, just like in Tonight The Streets Are Ours , and how it was handled at the end. Though the ending wasn't dramatic or anything, in fact I never really got emotional while reading the book, everything just kind of made sense at the end. The ending was very real, too. In real life not everything happens the way you want it to be, and this showed exactly that. I liked how everything didn't end happily with Elise's life, and that's because life isn't always pretty, but I also loved how some characters did get what they deserved, It was a great, uplifting read for me. I can say that this book is either a hit or miss for people. But I am a kind of person who loves a story which gives a strong message, even if it not might be the most exciting book I've read, because I know that despite being simple, it was worth reading. even if you're not like Elise, I'm sure you could relate to her somehow, and I would definitely recommend this book to everyone. (

I loved this book, another Amazon Kindle Daily Deal gem. Leila Sales captures what it is to be a teenager in a book that is at once warm, funny, poignant and nostalgic. Elise has always been an outsider amongst her peers, at best ignored and at worse bullied. But she’s not unpopular or bullied for any particular reason – isn’t this usually the way? It’s details like this that made Elise and her story real for me; the book portrays the meanness of teenage girls, and the awfulness that high school can be, so well and without dramatics or overstatements. Elise approaches her life philosophically and, at the start of This Song Will Save Your Life, she has spent a summer learning how to be popular: what to wear, which celebrities to talk about, what to watch on TV. But on the first day back at school, it’s clear that studying what it is to be cool doesn’t make you cool. It’s equally clear that the coming school year holds nothing different for Elise, and this is the straw that breaks her: she tries to kill herself. (This isn’t a spoiler, it happens really early in the book.) Following this cry for help, things at school get even worse for Elise. Her home life is also a bit sad – though she never complains about it or acknowledges it as sad – with divorced parents who don’t speak, step-siblings who she loves but lives apart from for half the week, and a complicated daily routine that means she isn’t completely settled in either place but both parents are happy. In trying to deal with, or perhaps get away from, everything going on her life, Elise takes to night-time walks around town and it’s on one of these walks that she stumbles across a warehouse party. Finally this is somewhere that her love of music is appreciated and shared, where she meets people who embrace her quirks and have plenty of their own in return, and – most importantly – where she discovers DJing. Contrary to how it sounds, this is not a depressing book and nor is it a book about DJing or even really about music. It’s a little like Eleanor & Park in that Elise’s music provides a soundtrack to the story (the audiobook version apparently comes with a recommended playlist, in fact) without being integral to understanding and enjoying it. This Song Will Save Your Life is in fact an uplifting and optimistic story; it’s just also an authentic one that sometimes rings true in more painful ways. I loved it because it was real and honest and, on the whole, high-school-cliché-free. Reading it as an adult, it made me look back on my teenage years in different ways and through different lenses; I’d love to know what people who read it as teenagers themselves think of it and its portrayal of adolescence and school and the social minefields that come with it. I think that Elise splits opinion as a protagonist. She’s intelligent and hard-working and determined, but she’s also precocious and sometimes a little naive and unable to put herself in someone else’s shoes and imagine how they might perceive her. She can be a bit stuck-up and superior – even as she wishes she could be more ‘normal’ and fit in, she does believe that her differences and quirks make her better than other people. This could be quite unattractive, but actually I wonder whether it’s her way of coping, a defence mechanism. Trying to modify herself to fit in hasn’t worked, so she starts to use as a kind of armour the characteristics that she thinks make her stick out. And, to be honest, she isn’t perfect and it’s hard to love her throughout, but that’s real too and part of the authentic charm of the novel – sometimes I wanted to protect her (I empathised completely with her feelings of hopelessness, the way that sometimes the relentless build-up of small things becomes so much harder to bear than any one big thing), other times I wanted to shake some sense into her. Many of the other characters – her parents, bouncer Mel, and so on – are perhaps a little less realistic, but they are colourful and warm and somehow feel just exactly right for the story. They also provide the perfect backdrop to bring out some of Elise’s most endearing characteristics – Mel, the gruff but friendly bouncer at the nightclub, teases Elise just enough to elicit her sense of humour and her pluckiness. Her eccentric parents and step-father highlight Elise’s compassion and affection, as well as providing some light relief from time to time. My favourite relationship, though, is the one Elise has with her step-siblings. Again, Leila Sales manages to depict aspects of family life so sharply – I couldn’t help but think back fondly to childhood memories of my own siblings, and the obvious love and protectiveness Elise feels for hers warmed my heart. One of the scenes that’s stayed with me most strongly is towards the end, when Elise does a horrible thing to her little sister but with the very best intentions at the time, determined to stop the little girl following the same path towards unpopularity, isolation and unhappiness. What she does devastates her sister, and Elise feels racked with guilt – when she eventually apologises and tries to make amends, the writing had me in tears. And the writing is lovely throughout. Elise’s voice is a convincing one – she is eloquent and (sometimes) insightful, but she doesn’t sound older than she’s meant to be – this isn’t the author’s voice seeping through. There were several paragraphs that jumped out at me as being so true or so perfectly phrased. There’s one, early on, about ‘the rules’ of being a teenager, which are impossible to learn but which the popular kids just seem to intuitively understand. There’s another, further on, that borders on slightly self-pitying but which completely captures Elise’s predicament: “I had always thought that if I just did something extraordinary enough, then people would like me. But that wasn’t true. You will drive away everyone by being extraordinary.” This Song Will Save Your Life doesn’t shy away from some ‘big’ themes: friendship, love, family, loyalty… Perhaps most of all, it’s about identity and acceptance. Acceptance of other people but also self-acceptance. I think that Elise grows throughout the book, for instance she starts to recognise that the way she treats two girls who welcome her as a friend is not that dissimilar to how she’s been treated throughout her school life. She also learns the hard way that her precocious tenacity is not always appreciated, and witnesses these traits combined with her natural talents contributing to the breakdown of a potentially very special friendship. And she comes to develop a better understanding of herself, of what she truly loves and wants to be and do. One of the messages of this book, I think, is that if you have that one thing that’s you and yours, you can learn about yourself by examining that passion and your relationship with it. For Elise, it’s music. For others, it might be reading or running or drawing… These passions don’t have to define you but they can help you figure yourself out and understand the person you are. Overall, this is a wonderful book. It’s very readable (it is aimed at teenagers, primarily), thought-provoking but not too heavy-handed, and very well balanced. It’s nostalgic and – for me, anyway – evocative, and definitely a book I’ll come back to in the future.

Sister seemed to like it as her gift. Haven't heard about what she thinks about the story though.

While I was reading the first couple of chapters of this book, I honestly didn't think I was going to like it all that much. I was mainly put off by the main character, and her almost clinical approach to the idea of killing herself. She didn't seem to have much thought for how it would affect her parents, and she didn't even consider her siblings. I felt like the way she was acting was quite childish, and I was looking for more emotion in those scenes, to really understand why she'd gotten to this point. However, after those first couple of chapters the story really picked up for me. I started liking Elise so much more than I had at the beginning, and I loved meeting all the new characters. I also really loved that there were so many music references in this book, because I love all kinds of different music, and this book has definitely given me some bands to look up. On the whole I thought that the characters were written really well. I liked how Elise's character growth felt natural, and how she found something she was really passionate about, which enabled her to see things in a different light. I'll admit, I was disappointed that there wasn't a bit more of a romance element. When we met Char I was really hoping that would play out differently. However I thought his character was written well, and I enjoyed seeing their interactions. Overall this book was great. I enjoyed it so much that I read it in one day because I just didn't want to put it down. Had it not been for those first few chapters this book probably would have been rated a nine or ten.

Die Story ist gut - schön beschrieben und nachvollziehbar - wenn auch etwas sehr unreal, aber für Teenanger super geeignet - das Lesen macht Spaß