The Girls at 17 Swann Street is the beautiful story of Anna, a former dancer, and her attempts at recovering from anorexia. Going into this novel, I only had a superficial understanding of this disease. I loved learning more about Anna as well as the psychology behind what caused her illness and how she worked to overcome her diagnosis. Though this book dealt with an incredibly difficult topic, it wasn't a depressing read. Zgheib did a wonderful job of balancing Anna's recovery with happy stories from her past and humorous events inside 17 Swann Street to keep the reader engaged and entertained. My only complaint is that I wish this novel was longer-I would have loved to read more about Anna's past and the events that led to anorexia.

I received this book free from NetGalley in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion.

Absolutely brilliant, riveting novel about one woman among many struggling with the disease and dis-ease of anorexia. An emotionally complex and deeply realistic, moving story about life, and how we live it, how we don’t live it, and everything in between. Your heart will break, and then it will break wide open to the possibilities of the beauty of life is we are brave enough to face our suffering as well as our joys. Highly recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book is not an easy read, but it is worth it. It is heart-breaking what a person with an eating disorder goes through. A very eye-opening book. It is very well written and once you start reading you can't stop. Thank you St. Martin's Press via NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book. This is my honest opinion of this book.

This was a short but emotional read. We follow a few weeks at a rehab centre in the life of Anna with some flashbacks to her past. Yara does a very good job of telling Anna's story, we hear about Anna from Anna herself and from the clinical notes made in her file, it is in her file that we see how she really struggles. I don't know someone and have never met with Anorexia but this book brought their struggle home to me. I shed some tears whilst reading. The only thing that bothered me about the book was that the spoken words were typed in cursive and that confused me a bit as normally a persons thoughts are typed that way. I also wanted more of Anna's story, I wanted to see if she made it, if she was one of the 33% that did not relapse. I hope so!!! I would definitely recommend this book.

Writing a book about anorexia is a delicate matter because done poorly, it can become a pro-ana how to guide,. The trick is to write compassionately without glamorizing, I began reading this novel with all my antennas up, waiting for it to be one of those surface books that exploits without illuminating. What I got instead was a novel that was so compassionate that I wept as I read it. This is not a a genre anorexia novel. It's a love story. Brava.

Full disclosure: I am an author and my first novel's main character was anorexic. It was a devastating experience, doing the research for that novel. Thank you netgalley for the ereview edition of this book.

The chocolate went first, then the cheese, the fries, the ice cream. The bread was more difficult, but if she could just lose a little more weight, perhaps she would make the soloists’ list. Perhaps if she were lighter, danced better, tried harder, she would be good enough. Perhaps if she just ran for one more mile, lost just one more pound.

Anna Roux was a professional dancer who followed the man of her dreams from Paris to Missouri. There, alone with her biggest fears – imperfection, failure, loneliness – she spirals down anorexia and depression till she weighs a mere eighty-eight pounds. Forced to seek treatment, she is admitted as a patient at 17 Swann Street, a peach pink house where pale, fragile women with life-threatening eating disorders live. Women like Emm, the veteran; quiet Valerie; Julia, always hungry. Together, they must fight their diseases and face six meals a day.

Every bite causes anxiety. Every flavor induces guilt. And every step Anna takes toward recovery will require strength, endurance, and the support of the girls at 17 Swann Street.

This was a nice book, as difficult as the topic was. I liked the prose, the pacing, and the overall plot design. Each chapter had some sort of new concept that developed, causing a greater understanding of the realistic life of someone who struggled with anorexia.

There were a few issues with the book, mostly minor situations. I would like to mention that the book changes between past and present without much indication. I’d like to have something a bit clearer that I wouldn’t have to backtrack between.

I’m not sure what exactly made me want to read this book, but it’s definitely a real book with real emotions and real facts. The media has romanticized eating disorders with trending books and movies and this book does not support a romanticized look at this.

An intense read that needs to have a trigger warning in front of, just so people know what they’re getting into.

Anna’s story starts in “Bedroom 5, on the east side of a pink house.” As Anna tells us, “Everything is pale and faded, a little like me.” She weighs 88 pounds. This is her story of her life with Anorexia nervosa. She has been admitted to a resident treatment program for women, which is at 17 Swann Street.

Anna reveals her life before 17 Swann Street, as flashbacks throughout the story. She lived with her family in Paris and experienced a family tragedy. She loved ballet and trained as a professional dancer. She met the love of her life, Matthias and married him. Then, he took a job in America and they both moved to Saint Louis.

But while she seemed to have a life, she really didn’t. She had lost herself to anorexia, which had consumed her in all ways. Her story of her treatment at 17 Swann Street is lyrical, compelling and tragic. Her father advises her to “keep walking” and so she continues to struggle toward life.

The stories of the other women at the treatment center are painfully sad, too. “Anorexia is the same story told every time by a different girl.” We learn that only 33% of women with restrictive anorexia maintain full recovery after nine months.

The story of Anna is written in a poetic and lyrical way and serves to highlight her sweet soul, so at odds with her hideous disease. Because of the subject matter this is not a fun read, but it is a compelling and important read. I recommend this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC. This is my honest review.

I received this book as an advanced readers copy,I loved this book so much. I could not help but to be hooked and there is a new plot in every chapter which made it such an enjoyable read.

I was given an ARC, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This is different than any book that I have ever read, but when I came across the opportunity to read it, to learn about the true struggles of people with either of the most known eating disorders. It may seem like something that doesn’t affect you, but whether we have knowledge of it or not, almost all of us have been touched by someone in our lives who are hiding a disease such as this.

The book was a quick read, but in a way that didn’t feel as if anything was left out. It does help those of us who haven’t dealt with the disease firsthand, understand more about it in layman’s terms, as well as getting to see what the immediate loving family of a suffering person, goes though. The strength that it takes not just to overcome an illness such as this, but to be a family member who is willing to ride through the ups and downs, is truly inspiring to anyone who has dealt with any kind of mental illness, addiction or “family secret.”

Thanks so much to the author for opening real experiences and hardships to anyone who is interested in reading this book. It not only offers knowledge to those of us who are interested, but will likely help to save others who are struggling through the same things.

My reason for 4 stars over 5 is that there were often times that as a reader I had to backtrack a paragraph to realize we had switched between past and present time or not another day. In the ARC edition, the transitoins are clearly pointed out by a paragraph spacing, asterisks or anything of that type, however the dialogue between people is in italics, making that easier to read in a flowing manner. This may be something that is changed or more clearly separated in the finalized edition, but for now, it made the flow a little less fluid for me.

Thanks again for sharing this experience!

#TheGirlsAt17swannStreet #NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.75 out of 5 stars.

Anna used to be a ballet dancer. Anna used to eat Matthias' pizza crust and Matthias would eat Anna's olives. Anna and Matthias. Matthias and Anna. They used to go out for ice cream.

Then foods started disappearing from Anna's diet. Chocolate. Ice cream. Pizza.
Then: bread, cheese, meat.

Now Anna is vegan and weights 88 pounds, and Matthias is checking her into 17 Swann Street. The house for girls with eating disorders. .

Anna is anorexic. The girls at 17 Swann Street at also anorexic, or bulemic, or have binge eating disorder. It is run like you would expect an institution to run: strict rules and strictly enforced rules. Six meals a day. Six terrifying, high-caloric meals a day of foods that Anna has already forgotten the taste of.

There is more than eating disorders going on here. There are abandonment issues. There is depression. There is severe anxiety. There is hope and there is lack of hope. There is terror of food that most of us cannot and never will understand. And yet... The author puts us in Anna's shoes, and suddenly it is something we can comprehend, particularly as women in a world still struggling to shut down the things that can give a woman body image issues.

I have to say, I'm not sure what drew me to this book. I must have read the synopsis for a different book and thought this was it. I have never read a book like this. I have never known the things I know now about eating disorders.

It is a beautiful book. Beautifully written, but abrasive in its truth. I found myself breaking with Anna, rejoicing in her small victories, angry at the staff for doing their jobs. Completely believable. So much, in fact, it almost felt like a diary or a memoir. Deep characters. Real emotion. True facts. I loved it, and I am glad I accidentally read it. You'll find yourself cheering Anna on silently with Matthias.

A truly intense novel written from the point of view of a young married woman with anorexia. Anna is a dancer in Paris, but an injury ends her career and she becomes obsessed with staying thin. Add in the depression resulting from her relocation to the USA for her husband's job and some childhood tragedies, and Anna winds up in a residential treatment facility for women with eating disorders. The author makes the thought process of the patient with anorexia painfully real.

As I was reading this story, I thought about a young woman who died from complications of an eating disorder called anorexia nervosa. She had everything to live for and was trying to take her life back. In 1983, singer Karen Carpenter’s death at the age of 32 brought visibility and awareness to anorexia nervosa. Those closest to her didn’t know how to help her. Today, we know a lot more about this disorder and there are many treatment centers available to those that need it. The Girls at 17 Swan Street provided a realistic look into this illness, mainly through the eyes of a twenty six year old, Anna, who initially resented being placed in the treatment center.

The author excelled at taking the reader into the thinking process of girls affected by this condition and bulimia. This process helped the reader to understand their inner battles, their suicide thoughts, and their distorted self images. The author also effectively examined family members’ guilt and struggles with understanding their loved ones’ eating disorder battles. They were outsiders looking in at an illness that was slowly killing those they loved.

This book is not an easy read, but it is an important one. I applaud the author for giving voice to these eating disorders and hopefully saving lives by doing so.
Highly Recommend!

I really enjoyed this book. It's mainly set in a rehab facility for treating patients with eating disorders, but at its core I found it to be a love story. The fact that the main character , Anna, is French and hails from Paris contributed to that. I have no idea of how accurate Anna is of the anorexic patient but I was rooting for her to win her battle over her eating problems. My only complaint about the book is I wanted to know why Anna developed anorexia. This is only hinted at and maybe the truth is, no one really knows for certain why some people will develop this disorder. I liked the medical tidbits interspersed throughout about the devastating effects anorexia has on the body long after recovery.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of the book to review.

Interesting look into a grown woman with an eating disorder vs a very young girl. Well written and emotional in a good, not maudlin way.

The Girls at 17 Swann Street is unlike any book I've read before. It inhabits the mind of the protagonist Anna Roux as she battles an eating disorder.

Author Yara Zgheib shows us a world within a world, the clinic where Anna battles her disorder. It's a place with its own rules and rituals, some established by the personnel running the place, and some established by the women who live there.

Through flashbacks, we learn how Anna, a dancer, came to leave her native Paris and live in Missouri with her husband, Matthias. We see the roots of her dysfunctional relationship with food grow more tangled as she winnows more and more things from her diet. We wince at the lies she and Matthias tell each other about her condition.

This is not a perfect book – the flashback structure sometimes interrupts the flow of the narrative. But it is a profoundly affecting one. It is one thing to understand, intellectually, how an eating disorder works. It's another thing to feel, viscerally, a young woman weeping because she does not want to eat yogurt.

Thank you to Net Galley and St. Martin's Press for an e-ARC of this title in exchange for an honest review. This book starts out a tiny bit slow, but not for long. I'd say within 10 pages I was hooked and interested in how the journey with anorexia was going to go. It was heartbreaking in many ways, because there were struggles and setbacks and losses. The writing is beautifully done, and I really cared about these characters. I think you will too.

17 Swann Street is the address for a house. A peach and pink house. It is not, however, an ordinary house. It is the home of girls, young women who are fighting eating disorders. Bulimia, anorexia. Those insidious of all diseases. You wish to lose a few pounds and can be caught in the trap of never being skinny enough. Even when your body, bones, skin, brains are being cannibalized, just for you to get up and get started with whatever you may have planned. This a remarkable story of a group of young women fighting to conquer the eating disorders that are slowly burning surely taking over their lives.
The characters portrayed are extraordinary. The storyline phenomenal. Highly recommended!

The Girls of 17 Swann Street by Yara Zgheib

Anna is a dancer, married to Matthias, and together they are young and in love and happy. Until the pressure of dance, injury and the ever-constant focus on thin ness, a loss of her position in a Parisian Ballet company, and a job offer for Matthias takes them from their home in Paris to St Louis, Missouri. Her life dwindles without dance, and with Matthias working long hours. Her eating dwindles too, until she is so sick she goes to 17 Swann Street, a rehabilitation house for eating disorders. Told in first person narrative, with intermittent reposts from the recovery team, The Girls of 17 Swann Street is a heartbreaking, yet hopeful book. The girls who live in the house care for Anna, and cheer her on, even if they can’t do it for themselves.

The novel is so well written, the reader will cringe with each bite that Anna must take of the foods she’s eliminated one by one. The calorie goals seem huge, but Anna gains slowly. We learn of the terrifying effects self-starvation has on the body and the very human psychology that deludes those with eating disorders.

Yet ultimately, this is a love story. Of Anna and Matthias, of the girls for one another, but ultimately, one woman’s desire to reclaim life. A compelling read.

WOW - What a wonderful first person story about a young woman battling anorexia nervous. Yara Zgheib makes you feel like you are experiencing first hand the debilitating effects associated with this crippling eating disorder. The characters are relatable and engaging. Nice job Yara bringing this infrequently discussed topic to the forefront.

As a mother who has an anorexic daughter this book is pretty spot on in its description of a restrictive anorexic. It's heartbreaking, but amazingly accurate.
Readers will draw some inspiration while seeing into the life and mind of someone with this disease.