Only pick up this book if you are in the mood for a very heavy topic. I was intrigued by both the topic and setting. I wanted to learn more about eating disorders and the early reviews of this book were strong. Unfortunately I was disappointed. I admit I get bored easily so perhaps it was just me but I found myself wanting to skip ahead about 40% of the way through the story. I did want to know what happens to Anna, the main character, but I didn't find any of the other characters well enough developed to care as much about them and I wasn't engrossed in the day to day of any of their lives. At first I felt like the language matched the intensity and stress of the topic but after a while it just became a bit of a drag to read.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me an early release of this book in exchange for an honest review.

*Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC in exchange for an honest review*
Wow.
This really packed a punch! The topic of eating disorders is one that isn’t often touched on in books, but is very prevalent in real life. Anna’s relationship with food is not a healthy one, and as such she is sent to 17 Swann Street to learn better to use food to fuel her body, and not see it as an enemy.
The cast of characters are colorful and show just how differently the same illness can manifest across different people.
This was an amazing work. Truly eye-opening.

What a heartfelt story! I usually do not read these types of novels, but this one caught my eye. I am so glad I was able to read the story of Anna, who goes through the cycle of anorexia to a healing stage. Even though, healing is something that will continue for ever. The intermingling of the other girls at 17 Swann Street was heartbreaking and brought truth to the story. This is a disease that affects many people.
I want to thank NetGalley for the opportunity to read and for an honest review.

People have a wide range of relationships with food: some enjoy too much of it, others find a moderate balance, while still others find it to be challenging. In Yara Zgheib's The Girls at 17 Swann Street the goal for the girls living there is to establish a healthy relationship with between themselves and food.

Anna's life has encountered several big changes, from disruptions in her dancing career to moving to a new country with her husband, which have compounded into a more serious danger to her well-being in the form of anorexia and depression. When weighing only 88 pounds and suffering from falls she's finally forced to seek treatment, becoming a new patient at 17 Swann Street.  Anna begins the uphill battle of combating her issues surrounding eating with the tireless support of the other women in the house as they work through their own. Getting through each meal as it comes, Anna and the women find ways, big and small, to cope with the anxieties the food brings out of them. 

An honest and intimate depiction of the mental anguish and struggles associated with eating disorders, this novel demonstrates the vast reach and impact that these disorders have on the lives of those with the disorders and their loved ones. A story that develops fairly well as a whole, balancing the heavy and serious subject matter with moments of remembered or various other small joys, I was a bit surprised at the rushed nature of the ending and Anna's overall progression, as it seemed a bit less than realistic how quickly she began recovering. The writing was generally engaging and the interspersion of Anna's case notes injected a grounding reality to the narrative, though some of the choices in denoting dialogue were confusing with both spoken dialogue and thoughts, of both past and present, demarcated in the same fashion. 

Overall, I'd give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I really like the characters in this book and the relationships they had. I would recommend this book.

This was a deeply emotional read for me. Painfully so, at times. But the author told the story beautiful and with so much care. With every page, I fell deeper into Anna's head and found myself thinking of her and her struggles even when I wasn't reading. An affecting book by a very talented author.

A haunting and hopeful look at anorexia through the eyes of Anna, who enters a treatment home on Swann Street. The story captures the pain, physical and mental, as Anna and the other residents make food choices and try to conquer their illness. Anna's husband plays a large part as the Author shows how the disease impacts loved ones.

Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

In The Girls of 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib we meet Anna Roux, a former professional ballerina who seems to find her value in what others think about her and in trying to get out of the troupe and into the prima position. She exercises more and eats less until she's sick and in need of professional care at 17 Swann Street. While there, she meets a number of other women going through their own battles with eating disorders. She enters into a rigorous program and learns more about herself and what she can and can't do. This is an informative book that helps the reader understand eating disorders just a little better. In general, I usually don’t read books like The Girls at 17 Swann Street but I'm so glad that I did.

I was granted access by netgalley.com to an ARC in exchange for an honest review. This book was hooked my in the first few pages, and I had a tough time putting it down! Intriguing and suspenseful, I'll recommend to all lovers of psychological thrillers!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of The Girls at Swann Street (from NetGalley). All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This one was SOOOO real. Very eye opening! I cannot imagine the self-imposed, yet tortured, lives of these girls. Their daily struggles are simply mind boggling. This was a well written sampling of the road to recovery--though not every girl's story has a happy ending. Swan Street made me want to research this condition as it exists in today's world. (I though I thought it was mostly a thing of the past, but I guess terrible body issues are always a plague on our society.). I am not sure if it ended in a realistic way or not. I think I am still on the fence about that.

Thank you to NetGalley and Yara Zgheib for the ARC.

This book was difficult to read in the best way. As someone who has struggled with similar issues, I saw something real in the book, that reminded me of myself. It means that the book was incredibly well-written and raw and real, but made it difficult to enjoy at times.

This is the story of Anna Roux, a young woman, who married Matthias, who is the love of her life. She moved with him from Paris to the states, and life changed. When she was in Paris, she was a ballet dancer. In the states, Missouri to be exact, she could not find a dance company to join. So instead, she obtained a job at a supermarket. In Paris she has a sister and a father and friends. In Missouri she has Matthias. In Paris, she began to cut back on what she allowed herself to eat. As a dancer, she needed to be thinner and thinner, so that she could possibly get a solo dance in the show they were doing. She had to be thinner to please the director of the company, who she was having an affair with. In Missouri, she has no dancing, but she eats even less, and when she and Matthias went home for the holidays, her family was shocked and scared. As a result of this and more, Matthias takes her to 17 Swann Street, a residential treatment center for eating disorders. This is the story of Anna either regaining her life or losing it completely. You will have to read the book to know which way things go.

As an eating disorder expert, I am often quite critical of eating disorder fiction. My clients love to read books about eating disorders, and way too often these books give them excellent ideas on how to make themselves sicker. Sometimes these books teach them that they are not sick enough, as they do not measure up to the characters in the novel, and thus they may work harder at their eating disorders. The Girls at 17 Swann Street is not one of these novels. The book does mention weight and calories, which could be left out, except that it does help the reader to understand where Anna is, where she started, and where she is able to go. So, I can see why that information is in there. More importantly, the story shines through, about Anna the person and not just Anna a person with an eating disorder. It is a realistic story -- the way the eating disorder program is described is pretty realistic, although much smaller than the ones I have worked in and visited. The reader can get a sense of what treatment may look like, how challenging it is, and the kinds of stories a person might find among the clients who live there. This is a great book for people who are interested in what having an eating disorder looks like, and it is a great book for people who like to read about the story of other people's lives. What a great debut novel. I look forward to future books by Yara Zgheib.

Anna Roux is a 26 year old woman and former dancer who follows her love, Matthias, to Missouri from Paris. In Paris, Anna was a dancer who loved to cook homemade crepes for her husband and read outside of cafes. In Paris, Anna was Anna. After moving to Missouri to follow her husband to his new job, Anna experiences a lot of time alone while her husband works. This alone time brings all of Anna's imperfections to the surface until she beings suffering from depression and anorexia. The anorexia began slowly at first, and like many cases, secretive. Anna's loved ones noticed what was happening, but loved her too much to see the severity of the situation. Everything changes when Anna finds herself weighing 88 pounds and is checked into a facility at 17 Swann Street where she will attempt to get better. Does she want to get better? What's wrong with her to begin with? She could probably bare to lose some weight. Her husband is overreacting, she's fine. Only eating apples and popcorn is normal. She's not anorexic. She's fine. Everything's fine..

These are the coinciding thoughts going through Anna's brain. At 17 Swann Street, Anna meets a group of girls going through the same thing she is. With a group of girls surrounding her and her love Matthias patiently waiting and supporting her along the way, Anna begins a journey to defeat anorexia and get back to the Anna she really is - the Anna full of love, full of life.. the Anna who loves to cook, loves to eat, loves to dance. All she has to do is eat, right? But is it really that easy?

This book taught me about the mental side of this disease. For some, its an addiction.. a high. For others, they don't even realize whats happening. Their brain is saying one thing, telling them they don't like those foods, they're gluten free, they look fat, they don't need the calories, so on & so on. Anna lost herself to anorexia. There was Anna, and then there was Anna with anorexia. Anorexia completely took over her brain and altered the Anna she once was.

I never knew the realities surrounding this disease and just how severe it really can be. It's not just a matter of eating the bagel. It's going through counseling, therapy, group sessions, trials, errors, nutritional plans.. it's so easy to see this disease through shaded lenses, but reading this book made me so aware of how scary and horrible anorexia really is.

This was, at times, a hard, dark read. But it was so good. I literally could not stop reading. The characters were real and raw while still somehow light-hearted and entertaining. The girls at 17 Swann Street were amazing characters who I wanted to get to know in real life and go on morning walks with. I grew to love Anna and wanted to give her husband, Matthias, the best husband in the entire world award. He's great. You'll agree with me.

Definitely a book worth reading!!

While the overview talks about the character's battle with an eating disorder I thought there would be more to the book - more substance, more back story. The professional dancing part of her life, the move to the States, seems to be glossed over, hardly elaborated upon; you start the book and it seems like Anna's already at Swann Street. The reading was easy, things didn't get to heavy considering the topic, but this book didn't suck me in, didn't build a connection to the characters, it left me wanting more.

I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect with this book, but was pleasantly surprised. I feel that even though this book is fiction, it is a realistic look at issues caused by, and the diseases themselves, of eating disorders. I really enjoyed this book and wish more authors would write about these issues as realistically as possible. I definitely recommend this book.

Lyrically written, much like a ballet itself, The Girls at 17 Swann Street is, at times, difficult to read. It's a painful subject, dealing with young women suffering from EDs. The protagonist, Anna, at first glance, seems as though life, somehow, got away with her. As a ballet dancer from Paris, who traveled the world, and then became injured, her life was truly on hold, as she followed her husband to the US to make a new start. Many books have been written on the subject, but this one takes a truly unique and honest look at the painful existence of life with anorexia nervosa. It's not pretty - and, yes, there are triggers to be aware of, but it is a valuable read for anyone who wishes to learn more about the mind and life of someone with an ED.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Matin's Press for the ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

I had a hard time diving into this one, but I gave it a second chance and got hooked on Anna’s story. I don’t struggle with an eating disorder, and I read this to help me understand what a dear friend is fighting. I appreciate how the author showed the other side, the inner side, of anorexia and how it can take over thoughts, actions, a life.

This book made me think of the documentary by Lauren Greenfield "Thin." I had met the author when she spoke at my university and many of the experiences within this book and Greenfield's coincided. Granted, Anna has an easier time than most ED patients I've ever read about it previously, even with the fight she puts up and I think that's where I sort of lose it? I wanted to learn more about Anna and I was intrigued by her story but it felt too easy for her and it rarely is that way for addictions.

I can’t remember the last time I sat down with a 400 page novel and didn’t get up for 4 hours until I reached the last page. Yara Zgheib has written a striking book that juxtaposes between Anna’s time at an eating disorder treatment center and the poetically written life that led her there. Told with engrossing and earnest honesty that draws the reader into the room, heart and mind of this groundbreaking novel.

This was a very moving book with an important topic. It was a truly captivating ride that left me slightly drained (in the best possible way)