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Everything Sucks: Losing My
Mind and Finding Myself in a High School Quest for Cool by Hannah
Friedman
 Being dubbed ‘That Monkey Girl’ by middle school bullies and being
pulled out of sixth grade to live on a tour bus with her agoraphobic
mother, smelly little brother and her father’s hippie band mates
convinces Hannah that she is destined to be forever seen as a freak.
She has a chance to turn her life around however when she enters one
of America’s most prestigious boarding schools on a scholarship. She
finally has the chance to become some she has never been, cool. By
the time she reaches her senior year, she has a perfect millionaire
boyfriend, a perfect designer wardrobe, excellent marks and is part
of the most popular clique in school.
All is not perfect in her life however, and her life begins to
become far worse than it ever was. She has a costly new drug habit,
eating disorder, an identity crisis and a queen-Bee attitude which
leads to the unravelling of her life. This time it will be much
harder to put her life back together.
The family, lifestyle and schooling system in the book might be
alien to most New Zealand students, but the desire to be popular is
the same in all countries. Readers are led on a rollercoaster from
the bottom of popularity stakes to the top and back again, learning
along the way that being cool sucks.
This book is definitely written for older teenagers and some of the
events like taking drugs might be too detailed for some. The titles
of each chapter also seem very negative. It also reads like a
fictional story, even though it is true.
If you can get past these, you will find the humorous but brutally
honest memoir of Hannah Friedman, one of the youngest writers to
have her work published in Newsweek magazine. She tells of her
experimentation with drugs and binge eating, her self loathing, her
first love and other details of her adolescence. Some may feel that
there are some issues not fully covered, like the death of a friend,
but on the whole it is entertaining and has a hopeful ending. It
also shows the dark side of adolescence and what some teenagers
face.
RRP $34.99
Published by Health Communication
Distributed by Southern Publishers Group
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