Thousand Words

by Jennifer Brown

I bit my lip as I typed in the words "sexting and teens" and hit "search." Articles popped up, one after another, and I groaned inwardly. Most of them were about me. Ashleigh's boyfriend, Kaleb, is about to leave for college, and Ashleigh is worried that he'll forget about her while he's away. So at a legendary end-of-summer pool party, Ashleigh's friends suggest she text him a picture of herself - sans swimsuit - to take with him. Before she can talk herself out of it, Ashleigh strides off to the bathroom, snaps a photo in the full-length mirror, and hits 'send.' But when Kaleb and Ashleigh go through a bad breakup, Kaleb takes revenge by forwarding the text to his baseball team. Soon the photo has gone viral, attracting the attention of the school board, the local police, and the media. As her friends and family try to distance themselves from the scandal, Ashleigh feels completely alone - until she meets Mack while serving her court-ordered community service. Not only does Mack offer a fresh chance at friendship, but he's the one person in town who received the text of Ashleigh's photo - and didn't look.
Acclaimed author Jennifer Brown brings readers a gripping novel about honesty and betrayal, redemption and friendship, attraction and integrity, as Ashleigh finds that while a picture may be worth a thousand words, it doesn't always tell the whole story.

• ISBN10: 1306764130
• ISBN13: 9781306764131
• Publish Date: 1 January 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 19 May 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[readingwithwrin]

4.5 stars

"Because you can get past a mistake, but it's much harder to get past being a cruel person."

We first me Ashleigh when she stars her community service she was sentenced to. From there we switch back and forth between the present and the past POV. We learn what got her into trouble, how it happened, and what the consequences were for her actions. We see her go through the struggle of losing her parent's trust and her friends not hanging around her. We see the hurtful things that get said to her and we feel like we're actually there with her.


I loved how Brown made a storyline and a lesson about what happens if you do send a sans-clothing picture. We've all heard the stories of what happens to the people that photo's get made public, but we never see what happens to them, or how they deal with it. This book showed us that and made me think things in a new perspective.


This book also showed me how fast things have changed because of technology and how many things get made more complicated because of it. Most of the things that this generation is dealing with, the parents have no idea how to deal with them or how to exactly stop them from happening. The truth is just like Ashleigh said "Back when I was born, my parents didn't own a computer yet. They didn't send emails or surf the Internet, and they certainly didn't send texts, much less picture texts. How much had changed in that short period of time."


I feel like this is one of those books that all teenagers, and young adults should read so they can understand some of the consequences that happen. Especially since most of them don't know that charges will be made if they are underage.