How to Save a Life

How to Save a Life 

When you hear the title of this book, you may think of the song by the Fray. I know I did when I first looked at it. But, the book doesn’t really have anything to do with the song, beside the fact that they share the same title. How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr is an excellent book that accurately reflections the emotions of the characters in the novel.

How to Save a Life is told in alternative points of view. Jill is a girl who is in her senior year of high school and just lost her father in a car accident. Now, her mom decided to adopt a baby to fill the void that her father left. And in comes Mandy. Mandy is 19 and pregnant, and is going to give her baby to Jill and her mother. When Mandy first moves in with Jill and her mother, Jill hates that her mom is doing this. But as Jill and Mandy interact more, the ice between them starts to melt.

Sara Zarr is one of my favorite writers because she captures emotions so realistically. Previous books that she has written are Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, and Once Was Lost. I’ve read all of these books, and I would recommend them all. In each novel, the girls struggle with something difficult and have to overcome it. When I was describing How to Save a Life to my mom, she said “It sounds a lot like something Jodi Picoult would write.” After I thought about, she’s kind of write. Sara Zarr is kind of like a Jodi Picoult for teens, except she doesn’t deal with as controversial subjects as Jodi Picoult. But her novels have a certain quality about them, I’m not quite sure what it is. Maybe it’s the way she writes, or the way she creates characters, I don’t know. But there’s something that keeps me reading her books. And I really enjoy it.

How to Save a Life has some great characters in it. You really feel like you can relate to them, even though you may not have the same problems. You feel like the way they’re reacting is really the way people would really react in their situations. It’s refreshing to read a story like that. Though if you want to read How to Save a Life, you’ll have to wait. I don’t think it comes out until January.

So what’s up next? Where She Went by Gayle Forman.