

Some teenagers will use this book as a tool to cope with being raped, and the fact that the book is dark and the main hcarecter tried cutting herself, portrays a bad messege. It was a very negative book although it ended in a positive way. In conclusion, it felt like it didn’t introduce new concepts, I didn’t find it succeeding at the originality part.

Most high schools don’t really care about how you look, everyone studies and go home, in my opinion, it was a little exaggerated and unrealistic. This book explained highschool the wrong way, it makes parents worried about their children. On the other hand, the character should go through a dark time after what happened, although I feel like she didn’t persevere through it as much as readers wanted to see happen. There are some points of the book were the readers wanted her to be defensive, as kids were laughing at her, it was a need for her to respond, but she didn’t.

What if a strong person goes through something tough? Maybe that would’ve been different.

In my opinion, the book was stereotypical, Melinda was shy, weak and quite, something happens to her, she changes. At the end of the book, the character speaks up for herself, which is the highlight of the book, but I still think she went through so much sensitive content that teenagers shouldn’t be thinking about it. If the character didn’t lose hope and tried pushing forward it would’ve had a greater moral. I felt like if the character was stronger it would’ve motivated teenagers to be like the character. The author wanted teenagers to read it in order to raise awareness, but I feel like it also tried to say that throughout everything that brings you down, you will go through wild pain. As Melinda, the main character felt like an outcast, she couldn’t help but go through depression, anxiety, and loss of hope That’s where the downfall in my opinion was. Rape is a sensitive content to the author since it also happened to her when she was a teenager, and it was inspiring that she portrayed it to a story. She also succeeded with the moral of the story, it served a great importance. Anderson’s did an excellent job with making the language simple, as most teenagers would like. The book “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson had its ups and downs.
