Wow! This Song Will Save Your Life was such a powerful book! I have to admit, it had so much more depth to it than I ever imagined. I mean... so many plot summaries out there say things like this:
[book title] is a super amazing book about identity and friendship and the power of [noun] to bring people together!
But how many times is that actually true? Usually it's a bit of an exaggeration (at least to me), and I rarely connect with the book that much. This was so not the case with This Song Will Save Your Life!. This book did make me feel. It was about identity and friendship. And music truly did bring people together in that happy tears kind of way.
This Song Will Save Your Life starts off about bullying. Not just bullying, but a bit of depression, suicide, and struggling to get through high school. I really felt for Elise! It's been a long time since I really and truly connected with a character. She made me feel ALL THE FEELS! She's kind of the invisible, sometimes-bullied girl in high school. She doesn't have any friends and certainly isn't "popular". Even when she did make friends, they weren't really friends. They were the people you can sit with at lunch and have "filler" conversations with, but they weren't that awesome BFF-type friends. I totally got that!!
I wasn't bullied in high school, but I had the hardest time making friends. My problem was that I was picky. I didn't just want any friend.. I wanted a friend who was like my soul sister.. someone who loved to read and loved video games, but could also still chat about boys and just whatever! I swear no one like that existed at my high school X_X And I didn't want to have "fake", "filler" friendships with people who weren't interested in the same things I was. UGH! Anyway.. I totally got where Elise was coming from. She just wanted a BFF! Is that too much to ask for? Certainly not!
And I love how music was the thing that really changed Elise's life. She stumbled upon music and friends totally accidentally, but they ended up grounding her and rocking her world.
There was kind of a meh half romance in This Song Will Save Your Life but it's not really prominent enough to warrant talking about it in depth. I kind of wrote it off as a bad "let's learn from this experience" romance. Lol. It was a bit of a bummer to not have a solid romance because I like having romance in everything I read, but the rest of the book was phenomenal so I'll let it slide!
I definitely recommend This Song Will Save Your Life if you're into books about fitting in and just making your way through the horrors of high school! Plus.. music. Music! Any music fans will love this! It's so easy to breeze right through this book and it will keep you interested every step of the way.