Keep Holding on

by Susane Colasanti

[Chelsea]

Initial Thoughts
So this book had a lot to do with bullying. Maybe I’m a mean and terrible person but at the start I felt no pity towards the main character. If you’re going to let yourself be bullied and not stand up for yourself then whatever. If you can’t try to stand up for yourself then I don’t want anything to do with you. My view did change towards the middle and the end though.

My New Best Friend
I think I liked Sherae (I think that was her name) the best. She’s the best friend of the main character and I liked her more because she believed in herself way more than Noelle. She was ok with her friend being poor and even helped her out without Noelle even knowing. I just thought that she was really cute and enjoyable.

My Crush
Simon. I liked Julian but we didn’t see him as much as I would have liked so I pick Simon for my imaginary boyfriend. I loved how he didn’t care what anyone else thought of him and it made people leave him alone. He was so nice to Noelle and always bought her food because he knew she couldn’t afford it. He was just really cute and I loved it when he was around.

Writing Style
Her writing style was really good.Her dialogue was spot on and she kept her descriptions short and sweet. There’s really not a whole lot to say about it. I really liked how she writes and I might look into some more of her books.

Closing Thoughts
At the end I decided that I did kind of feel bad for Noelle because not only did she not help herself, nobody else helped her out either. There was one teacher and her best friend that even cared about her. Her own mother wouldn’t even feed her. The ending was a little sad but I think it was necessary for the character to step out of her shell and grow up. There was a lot of harsh bullying in this book and it didn’t always end up well for everyone. I think it was a good read and more teenagers in high school should read this. Nobody realizes how much bullying there really is in the world.

Bonus
There wasn’t really a bonus for me this time. It was a rough book with some hard topics but I think the author covered them really well.

Quote
“If you see someone being bullied, make it stop. Why is that so hard for us to do?”