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Leftovers | 
| Manufacturer: MTV
Category: EBooks
List Price: $10.99
Buy New: $8.79
You Save: $2.20 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 475
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
ASIN: B0013G3EMG
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
A devastating novel of desperation and revenge from one of today's most compelling new voices in fiction. In this follow-up to her heartbreaking debut, Such a Pretty Girl, Laura Wiess once again spins a shattering tale of the tragedies that befall young women who are considered society's Leftovers. Blair and Ardith are best friends who have committed an unforgivable act in the name of love and justice. But in order to understand what could drive two young women to such extreme measures, first you'll have to understand why. You'll have to listen as they describe parents who are alternately absent and smothering, classmates who mock and shun anyone different, and young men who are allowed to hurt and dominate without consequence. You will have to learn what it's like to be a teenage girl who locks her bedroom door at night, who has been written off by the adults around her as damaged goods. A girl who has no one to trust except the one person she's forbidden to see. You'll have to understand what it's really like to be forgotten and abandoned in America today. Are you ready?
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Different, but good. May 31, 2008
I picked this book up on a whim from Borders. The cover actually drew me into it. I figured I'd give it a whirl. It was a pretty good book. I enjoyed the story line and even added the author's other book, 'Such a Pretty Girl' to my wish list. Who knows? Might like that one too!
 I can relate with this book May 17, 2008
I can really relate in this book, as my adolescent years were very messy.
I am not so much of a summery reviewer but a critic. I think that this book is good for anyone to read, it tends to give you more understanding of the world today. It also illuminates the many adversities that young adults suffer through. Coming from two teenage narrators you can see things a lot clearly through their eyes.
Easy read.
Don't Underestimate Best Friends April 6, 2008
Everyone overlooked the power that best friends have as a combined power. Blair and Ardith are from opposite lifestyles, but that is never an issue, until one night. Ardith has alcoholic parents who allow her brother and his friends to party at their house, so they can be seen as "cool". Blair is an only child. Her mother is not stopping until she becomes a judge. Blair's mom is all about appearences. Mom goes too far. The only person who actually sees them as who they are is Officer Dave.
Read this book, then go back and read the beginning again. This is a book you just can't put down.
a pretty good book April 1, 2008
I liked this book. It was a hard story to read because it was so unhappy, but it was engaging and left you wanting to know what would happen. What does happen is surprising and upsetting. It is not meant to be a story that you read as moral lesson, I don't think. I think it is a story that one is supposed to read and take in and wonder how the hell these girls got to the place where they made the decisions they did.
 Laura Wiess needs to stop February 13, 2008
9 out of 21 found this review helpful
This book is almost breathtakingly awful. After I read the author's first attempt, Such a Pretty Girl, I was incensed by the valorization of martyrdom/self-victimization and the implicit message that its protagonist was "brave" for deliberately allowing herself to be assaulted in order to get her attacker imprisoned. It sent the message that if a teenager with an abuse history wouldn't deliberately allow herself to be hurt again for the good of others, then she wasn't as brave as that narrator. In reality, I have worked on rape crisis hotlines for years and I have never, but never, met a survivor who reacted that way. Maybe they exist somewhere. But I've never met them.
So when I saw that this was out and I had an hour to kill in a bookstore, I thought I'd see whether this could possibly be as bad as Such a Pretty Girl.
It wasn't as bad.
It was worse.
Despite the fact that the previous book had one protagonist and this one had two, the plots were strikingly similar. Protagonists are assaulted/beaten down by the world, things build up, a guy who should be in jail isn't, and they orchestrate an assault in order to get him convictde and in jail.
The only difference here is that they set *someone else* up to get raped. A twelve-year-old.
I'm supposed to empathize with them, I know. I'm supposed to think they're plucky and defiant, standing up to a world that's hurt them time and again. I'm supposed to understand, against my will, why they would do such a horrible thing.
As it is the only thing I understand is that it's a damn good thing that the author sucks at characterization, because I would have *hated* her protagonists if they weren't so two-dimensional that it's impossible to care about them.
You want to get back at that guy, lash out at HIM. The book never once addresses the trauma that it subjects that twelve-year-old girl to. She's just... not there. Just a tool to be used.
The author's prose is okay and she has a habit of writing about sensationalized subjects (which she, emphatically, does not understand. At all.) I think this is why she gets all the praise she gets.
She doesn't deserve any of it. What she deserves is to have someone slap her upside the head and tell her that self-victimization is terribly sad, not heroic, and deliberate endangerment of someone else is disgusting. End of story.
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