The Story: High School student Polarity Weeks is used to being an outsider at school. Since her parents move a lot, she is often in different schools and therefore the new girl. Her Mom was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder which is the reason why they move a lot to find a treatment that will help her keep the illness and her symptoms under control.
Polarity’s life is already difficult when suddenly a naked picture of her pops up on the internet – discovered from students in her class – that turns her world upside down. She soon will discover that things will get worse before they get better. But never in her life would she have imagined that a picture she never posed for would force her away from her parents.
The big question now: Who posted the picture on the internet and how was it made?!
Polarity knows that she didn’t pose for that picture, but how does the girl on it look exactly like her? Will she be able to prove her innocence and is Polarity going to find answers to her questions?
My opinion about the topics mentioned in this book:
I like that this book shows us so many problems that we have in our society. Prejudices, aversion for different races, afraid of differentness, bullying, not standing up for the good - maybe because we don’t care or are afraid to be pulled into something we don’t like getting into.
Bullying is a big topic in this book and is something a lot of people have to deal with in real life. Either in school, at work, at home, abroad,… I wish that my teachers at school would have let us read something like this book, because it’s a perfect basic to start talking about this problem and how everyone of us can help to stop it.
Some thoughts: Spoiler alert!
Poor Polarity. This must have been so humiliating. If I was her I wouldn't have wanted to go back into this school ever again.
I loved her interactions with Tilly and also with Ethan. He was like a solid rock for her. (Maybe not always so solid ;)
And even though Tracey posted the picture, I felt bad for her too, because she was also being bullied and she had good intentions when she recorded the Video in the first place. Can you imagine that everything happened because of an misunderstanding? Because Polarity thought that Tracey's name was Arvey and therefore Tracey thought Polarity was making fun of her.
I absolutely LOVED the reason why her mother gave Polarity her name.
(Quote: “Mom knows that BPD can cause her to see people as perfect or evil. She named me Polarity, spanning positive and negative, to remind her that I'm not one or the other.” ... “She wanted to be sure that she never judged me the way that borderlines tend to do.”)
I enjoyed reading about Polarity and how she developed throughout this story. Her horrible experience made her attentive to other people with problems and that some of them are not as lucky as her to have relatives at their side to help them and sometimes they may even have a lot working against them.
It was incredible that even when Polarity’s parents believed that she did pose for this picture, they helped her with everything within their power to find the person who’s responsible for all this trouble.
I was thinking about something like this happening in other countries. Would there be the same procedure? I was astonished at first when the school involved the police and Polarity got taken into a safe house. I thought how it would be in my country. I believed that it would have been a lot different but after I thought it through I understood that since a minor is involved, this is a reasoned way to handle this situation. Like they mentioned in the book – nobody knows her parents, they may have been the photographer of the picture and Polarity could have been living in a bad family. And as horrible as it was for Polarity to go to a safe house and live at her grandmother’s place without contacting her parents for months, it was just for her safety.
I loved how Polarity and her father handled difficult situations due to her mother’s illness. Though I was missing just a bit more information about her mother and the treatment she may have been going through at the moment. But since the book is about Polarity’s picture situation, I understand that this is not as important for her story and would have probably needed a lot more space in the book.
I also loved that Ethan helped the underdogs even though he kind of was an outsider himself. He’s admirable.
Richer of one more experience I believe that Polarity and Ethan’s way of living will be a lot different from now on. And luckily they are both moving away and leaving this school behind. Kind of a like new start, that’s nice.
All in all:
I cannot repeat it often enough: I really enjoyed reading this book. The writing was good and I loved all those details which may seem weird looking at separately but made so much sense at the end when they all came together. And the Characters – even the “bad” ones – were really good described. I could really picture this story in my head while reading.
Last but not least:
A huge THANK YOU to Brenda Vicars for providing me with the free e-version of this book in exchange of my honest review. I feel honored.
I love the book and I am soooo happy that I got the chance to read it.
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