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In the beginning, Stevie would've taken any chance to commit suicide easily. Toward the end of the story, she was given the chance, and she gave it up. She had chugged a whole bunch of pills to kill herself after some incident with her therapist. Halfway through the process, though, she threw them all up and decided she wanted to live. She has definitely made a major change since her "anorexia alter ego" sort of attitude, would easily would have chugged them any day no question. She's gone out of her comfort zone to recover.

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On page 187, one specific example was her brother's feelings of her. When a massive conflict between Josh, his girlfriend, and herself arose, things went downhill. Stevie and Josh ended up getting in a car accident because of his angered driving and he ended up dying. But despite this, even in his last moments of life his actions reflected that he loved his sister a lot. That's why he got mad; he didn't want her getting hurt over someone that shouldn't have. When he was being overprotective, she had complained "Why couldn't he be like everybody else's older brother?" Little did she realize that he was just trying to protect her and she should've been more thankful before her was gone.

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This sort of thinking was obviously toward the end of the book, but she had thought "I'm supposed to use this time to retrain my brain, my thinking, the way I perceive myself and the world around me." Since the start of the story, she has worked to get her brain into a positive mindset. She was determined and persevered through the nasty thoughts that were built up over the years that she suffered.

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The main antagonist to Stevie is her eating disorder, Anorexia Nervosa. Throughout the story, she emphasizes how she needs to lose weight even though she already was at a dangerously low BMI. She doesn't realise that the disorder is bad, because in her eyes, it's a distraction from the pain she felt with her family. So she doesn't fight the disorder at first because at this point, it's something that she could focus on. When you have an unhealthy obsession like that, you become an expert on it. Off the top of her head, she had described her soda with "140 calories, 39 grams of carbs, 39 grams of sugar." She did this without even looking at the information on the back of the can.Only until she started to actually recover could she see the severity of what she was doing, or what the disorder was doing.

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For this book, we are in the first person view. I know we are in the main character's point of view because we see her refer to herself as "I." We also go through her thought process that we wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Even as early as the first sentence it reads: "Twenty-seven days to freedom, and I am caged."

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One main conflict demonstrates Character vs. Self. Stevie was battling several eating disorders and constantly had to fight against her urges to harm herself. She had many suicidal thoughts, and very difficult feelings and situations. She was so focused about how she looked in every situation possible.

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"Shut up, Josh. Not everyone's perfect like you, you? So just quit being so judgemental... you're just like mom."  She would always compare herself to others and she gets sensitive when she isn't perfect or exactly how she wants herself to be. Also, she holds grudges that end up hurting her more than just letting it go and moving on.

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As described in our first chapter of the book, she says she has "uneven, razored layers [of hair] fall lifelessly around my skull." She also described what it felt like to pick out and feel each individual bone and ribs. By the end of the story, whether she liked it or not, she began to lose that rigid shape and began to have meat on her bones. Her pants wouldn't fit exactly how they used to when she first arrived.

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I believe that Stevie was a good leader based on her characterization. She had a huge attitude change in the span of the book.
She first had to have acceptance. "Acceptance that your brother is dead. Acceptance of your eating disorder, of needing to be in this place for a little while. Acceptance doesn't mean you like something, doesn't mean you're comfortable with it. But it does mean that you acknowledge it for what it is." This was explained when Anna told her that she had come to a place of acceptance. People look up to people who are willing to change from what they were before.
A mindset change for the better in my opinion is the most admirable leadership quality one could have.

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I personally thought the book Paperweight by Meg Haston was a good read. I enjoyed it because the topic hits close to home.

The story itself was very believable, it sounds like the author was describing her experience which is what gave it that realistic feel. I really understood the characters feelings when they were being described. With a topic like this, detail is everything. The reader wants to know exactly what is going on inside this anorexic girl's mind because chances are they've never been through something like this. Although the story was believable, it wasn't dry like you'd might expect. You'd think at all glance all you'd be reading about is just how a girl went to lunch and didn't want to eat, but it was a lot different. There was lots of characterization being expressed through thoughts, speech, and actions.

There were many flashbacks which fit well with the style of writing. I loved the flashbacks, it gave so much information and it formed such a great backstory. It was so detailed and I always knew when and where we were. It also showed a lot of her actions and speech that supported her personality. I'd say the most important part of the book is expressed through a flashback of her causing her brother's death. It expressed exactly how it happened in detail.

I didn't particularly like the ending. Although it was on the bright side, which I liked, it also came to a screeching halt. The story didn't end with her leaving, but with her finally being determined to recover and get better. But right before that point, about a chapter from the end, it took sharp turn and was focused on how her friend tried to kill herself. It totally sidetracked the whole flow of how the book was going and the focus suddenly changed from Stevie telling her therapist about her brother, to her freaking out about some irrelevant person. Then it jerked back to Stevie focusing on recovery.

If you like to read books where the protagonist starts at the lowest point possible, to thriving at the end of the book, then this would be a good selection for you. The character progression was emphasized a ton to show how her mental and physical state improved since the start of the book.

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The theme the author was expressing was "you were put here for a reason, you deserve good and are worth something valuable."
They had mentioned she "had never believed that all people were equal," but that didn't necessarily mean that someone is less than another. She definitely discovered this toward the end when she had thought "we're supposed to be focusing on the bigger picture issues, like learning how not to despise our lives, learning how to love our bodies, and how to make peace with who we are." She also came to the realization that some people, like disorders, are "viruses. I have been fevered with [Eden, a fake friend] since the first day of class." Eden was a toxic person that messed with both Stevie and the people she loved. Stevie didn't need her to love herself when she could learn to do it herself.

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My book takes place in the  view of Stephanie, or Stevie for short. She is scarred by her mother leaving. Then her brother, Joshua dying on her account. Every day she thinks about both of them and blames only herself for what happened. This is what drove her to her extreme weight loss due to anorexia and suicidal thoughts.

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Another conflict demonstrated was Character vs. Character. For a large portion of the book, Anna, the therapist would be trying to convince Stevie that she was worth living for. Inside her head, she would convince herself that everything Anna was saying was getting in the way of her suicide and reunitement of her and Josh.

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This story takes place present day in an eat disorder treatment center in New Mexico. Eating disorders existed for a very long time, but only recently was when they actually had treatment and put together certain methods to secure them; which proves that this is present time. The setting is one of the most valuable pieces to this story: the book is about how the girl progresses through her recovery when she is sent to this treatment center to cure her eating disorder.