I didn’t read up on this book before I started it. I saw the girl with the skeleton chest and the flowers and thought this book was right up my alley. I had no idea going in that I would see portions of my own life. In this book we follow the main character Val as she comes to term with her disordered eating and how her family, particularly her mom affected this. Valerie is bulimic, she throws up almost everything she eats. She has been doing it for years because her mother insists she’s not thin enough and that she needs to watch what she eats and never become fat. Wow! Her best friend is on the larger side and Val’s mom is constantly “she’s so ugly, she’s not pretty, why would anybody like the fat girl”. I was the fat girl, so this book really does speak to me. My parents were wonderful but my extended family not so much. I would constantly get told “you’d be so pretty if you were thinner”. “You could be a model if you were thinner”. So, this book has left me with emotions. This book simplifies a very hard and complicated topic, but it makes it approachable for people who don’t live with these types of things in their life. This book is well written, true to form and very heartfelt. The title is a misnomer, but at the same time you can see how Val is living as a ghost of who she should be. It’s for those reasons that I give this an over astounding good read. There needs to be more books like this for kids and teens who live or have friends living in similar situations.