The Girls at 17 Swann Street and other January Reads

I finished 8 books in January:

Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness
Your First Year as a High School Teacher by Lynne Rominger etal.
The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib (ARC)
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
The Suspect by Fiona Barton (ARC)
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King
https://amzn.to/2TuKWuHThe Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine
More Than Words by Jill Santopolo (eARC)

I reviewed three ARCs this month. My favorite ARC this month was The Girls at 17 Swann Street (full review below).
For my review of The Suspect click here
For my review of More Than Words click here

I received an Advance Readers' Edition of the The Girls at 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib from the publisher (St. Martin's Press) in exchange for an honest review. The Girls at 17 Swann Street is scheduled for release on February 5, 2019.

This novel is the story of one woman and her battle with an eating disorder. We join Anna on the day of her admission to a residential treatment program. Here she is surrounded by a group of women who allow Anna to see what she is doing to herself and help her realize how much she has to fight for.

The story jumps back and forth in time as Anna deals with the path that has led her to this house and searches for the path that will take her back out. These glimpses into Anna's past, including her childhood and the early days of her relationship with her husband, allow us to see how the disease developed, and appreciate that it was not one incident, or a decision made by Anna that led her to anorexia.

Primarily, the story is told by Anna, so we have direct access to her thoughts and inner battle when she is faced with something as innocent as a bagel with cream cheese. What is interesting about the presentation of the story is the format. In this edition, paragraphs are all left-justified with no indent and a space between each. Dialogue is written in italics, with no tags attached. This gives the story a poetic feel. It also put a bit of distance between the story and the reader. To me, it made the dialogue and events feel like an echo. I am curious if this formatting is intentional and will be kept in the final version. This might be a deliberate choice to give the reader a taste of how Anna interprets the world around her.

This novel was a very fast read, as I was drawn into Anna's world and her journey. Toward the end of the novel, I did feel as if the plot was a bit rushed. Again, this might be an intentional choice, representing how these residential treatment centers move patients through in an effort to help as many people as they can. It might also have been to elicit a reaction from the reader. I found myself worried about Anna, worried what would happen once I closed the book. I was concerned that she hadn't had enough time, that she hadn't dealt with everything she needed to deal with, to move forward and be healthy.

The Girls at 17 Swann Street definitely pulled me in, dropped me deep in the mind of a person fighting an eating disorder and showed me their world. I recommend this to anyone who wants to better understand what is happening with a person who is battling this disease, but I do warn that it might be a very difficult read for anyone who is fighting these battles themselves.