This Song will Save your Life

Author: Leila Sales

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Year: 2013

Ranking: 4 / 5

  Synopsis

Making friends has never been Elise Dembowski’s strong suit. All throughout her life, she’s been the butt of every joke and the outsider in every conversation. When a final attempt at popularity fails, Elise nearly gives up. Then she stumbles upon a warehouse party where she meets Vicky, a girl in a band who accepts her; Char, a cute, yet mysterious disc jockey; Pippa, a carefree spirit from England; and most importantly, a love for DJing.

Told in a refreshingly genuine and laugh-out-loud funny voice, THIS SONG WILL SAVE YOUR LIFE is an exuberant novel about identity, friendship, and the power of music to bring people together.

The Author

Leila Sales was born in 1984 and grew up outside of Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from the University of Chicago with a degree in psychology in 2006. Now she lives in Brooklyn, New York, and works in the mostly glamorous world of children's book publishing. Leila spends most of her time thinking about sleeping, kittens, dance parties, and stories that she wants to write. 

Personal Experience with This Book

I started reading this book because it was the first book in my phone that was catalogued as unread. A few weeks ago I had recently read about two pages and had put on it hold. However, last Friday I decided to keep reading it and it took me exactly the weekend to finish it. I liked the book and I am very happy I decided to finished it.

The premise of the book is a bit marked by the cliché of the girl who has no friends, who is a weirdo, who keeps listening unpopular music and, in some way or another begin to see herself wrapped in a world that she does not know and that makes her see herself differently. Despite the cliché of the synopsis, the book is very good and grabs you as a reader.

I enjoyed how Elise develops throughout the story. We see in the beginning, a girl with self-esteem on the ground and thinking that the most important thing for her at this time is to be "normal" and to have friends. We see how she always underestimates herself and fails to believe that she has people around who love her for who she is and that not everyone who approaches to her have a hidden goal that will have consequences where she will humiliated. Very few people could stand how Elise behaves during the first half of the book if not for what she begins to experience. As a reader you see that Elise sees through her eyes is always bad; I wanted her to really open her eyes and realize what surrounded her. At the end of the story we see that Elise has much more confidence in herself and as has learned to find her way and what she wants in her life.

I also liked that the story has nothing of romance. We have a romantic interest, Char, but we do not have a story of two people falling in love. I liked this because although the relationship between Elise and Char plays a role in the story, the romance did not become the centre of it. I really liked that Elise nevertheless had the maturity to deal with her relationship with Char in a different way than normally seen in books of this kind. And, I really liked that in the end she ended up in the place where she belonged.

Music is something that takes the story unique. Elise loves music more than anything, and this becomes part of what she is as a person and get to define what she wants for herself. Besides, I loved the musical references from the book, and I finish listening to the playlist and is very good.

It is a book that you can read very fast, with short chapters, with much dialogue and many musical references. I enjoyed reading it and I think it would be good that many teenagers read it. Because when you are a teenager you think life in high school will define what you will be and will not be the rest of your life and you do not realize that it is not the role you play in high school what it will, but what you do with every decision you make every day. It is not about being or not popular but knowing who you are and you want to do with your life.