Weightless

Carolyn is fifteen when she and her mom move from New Jersey to Alabama. A good student and promising athlete, she takes her new school and its students by storm. She gets adopted by the popular kids and begins to date a senior, Shane. Shane is a guy who likes to play the field and his on again off again lover Brooke becomes obsessed with taking Carolyn down. She posts a video of Shane and Carolyn fooling around and Carolyn goes from popular girl to school skank overnight. The gossip and bullying begin to take their toll and the whole situation reaches critical mass when Shane and Brooke (now back together), confront Carolyn in the school parking lot.

School bullying gets a lot of press, but rarely do we see the press report on girl against girl violence. It certainly happens, probably more than people realize. Bannan’s book shines a light on this dark and dirty secret. A must read for both teens and their parents

The collective "we" bullies Carolyn, a new arrival to town, a beautiful and smart young woman who makes the mistake of dating a guy another girl likes. Soon she is being called a slut and a whore and videos and Facebook posts fly across the internet. The girl is well-liked by most people because she is funny and wants to please others but ultimately they do nothing to help her.

By using "we", the author makes us all culpable but all equally anonymous. It allows us to hide behind a wall nameless and faceless, much like we do online. None of is guilty of what happens to Carolyn and all of us are. I did like that at first but there were many times when I wanted to know more about the "we." I would have liked to get some 3-dimensionality to all of the characters or even just a few.

We have the 2 boys who date her, who themselves participate in her bullying, neither of whom come to her rescue - ever. And the mean girls on the swim team who claim to think she's pretty and cool and they want to be her and then tear her down at every opportunity.

The thing about bullying someone until something unforgivable happens is that there is more to it than simply being teased mercilessly. Carolyn loses weight and cuts herself but there was some evidence other things were going on in her life before she moved to the small town. Her parents are not together. Her dad is in New Jersey, far from their new home. But what else was going on with her? Because the book is narrated from the "we" POV, we never see anything with her.

However, my desire for knowing more about my narrators or about Carolyn is precisely NOT what the author wants and kudos to her. She absolutely achieved her goal. She put us in the place of the bullies, even the back-and-forth among the group to prove that it's not really a conscious effort on the part of a group - it simply happens. And no one wants to take responsibility. Is it a teen thing? Partially. But those teens grow up and I've seen people never grow out of that. The worst of them continue to be bullies (although granted the rest of us recognize that and stay far away if we can) but others are simply bystanders. They don't become involved, they don't help others, they pass along rumors and innuendo. Those people can be just as dangerous, especially on the internet where the veil of anonymity can be thick.

An excellent, fast-paced read. You might know where it's going but that's okay. It's the road getting there that you want to take a look at. (Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy.)

This is a book about teenage bullying.

But, wait, don't stop there.

It's really just a book about life as a teenager in a small Southern town. Period. I've been a teenager in a small Southern town. This could be my life (OK, fine, I haven't been a teenager for decades.). It's not a sermon on bullying. It's just a slice of life in a particular time in a particular place, I think. And that's the genius of it....because I walked away not really knowing how I would have felt at sixteen and not even knowing I feel at forty-something.

Carolyn Lessing has moved from New Jersey (and not just New Jersey, but a cool private school that has its own entry on Urban Dictionary, so awesome New Jersey) to Adamsville, Alabama. They may call it "Adamasville". I called it "Tazewell, Virginia" and there are thousands of towns just like it....and if you lived in one, you knew it, "in Adamsville, we didn't pray that we'd graduate, that we'd get along, that we'd get good jobs or get into Ivy League schools. We didn't pray that some of us would manage to get out of here, that some of us might have a life outside of this town. We prayed for our football team, that they'd go undefeated, that we would get to State. That we would win." and note that said prayer is given by the Baptist minister and the church most people go to at a school event, not at church on Sunday (this was so common place so as to be unremarkable). Oh, and the HEAT. I'll be the first to admit that Virginia isn't Alabama, but the inland South is hot and humid in the summer. It's so oppressive sometimes you can't think about much else. Also, the drinking in the South....I can't speak for everyone, but, much like our narrator and her friends, I started drinking regularly at about age 13. I had no idea that was unusual until I went away to college. And the million little things, like the consideration of what to wear on the first day of school, and making fun of the clothing the faculty wore (which makes me so ashamed now). It all came so alive for me again And, again, if you lived there, you'd know.

So Carolyn arrives, with her cool clothes, great makeup and style such that Adamsville has never seen anything like her. She's incredibly beautiful so the school's elite, the football players and cheerleaders immediately take to her, but Carolyn makes a horrible error....in a town where everyone has known each other since nursery school there are couples that have been together forever. They are untouchable property. And Shane, who belongs to Brooke, falls for Carolyn, leading to massive hatred from Brooke and best friend, Gemma and, in some ways, but, interestingly enough not in some others infects the whole school.

Shane, Brooke, Gemma and even newly arrived Carolyn are part of the school's elite, the football players (where football is king and every other sport is an also ran) and the cheerleaders are queens. Our unnamed narrator and her friends are also-rans, wanna-bes. Members of the swim team. They used to be friends with the popular Taylor, but that was back in grade school before Taylor got pretty and became a cheerleader. Now Taylor pretends not to know them, but there are also a few hints that there may be even a lower social caste that our narrator and her friends don't speak to either. This isn't presented as anything special...it's just the way life works. It's high school. And most of these kids will go to the local community college, or maybe Alabama or Auburn if they are strivers, but, most likely, will return to Adamsville to raise their families. Substitute "Virginia and Virginia Tech in that last sentence and, again, my life.

We know from foreshadowing that this isn't going to work out well for Carolyn, but we're not sure what's going to happen, or why. And what may be surprising is the degree to which so many of the Adamsville students, even the ones who truly like her, like the narrator and her friends, are complicit, in small ways, in bringing her down. Part of it is just wanting to know her better, to understand how someone so different can exist. Another interesting tool Bannan employs are intermittent breaks in the chronological action with Facebook posts by the students (these bothered me a bit - do parents, especially parents like the Reverend Davies, really not monitor kids' internet activity?), as well as newspaper articles, PTA minutes and faculty reports, so we get some view from adults as well as from the teens.

And in the end....who is to blame? As I said, it's hard to know. So many people share so responsibility that it's difficult to find just a handful to punish (although a number are). This was just so well done, I can't say enough good things about it - there are no easy answers, but there shouldn't be. Congratulations to Bannan - I hope she finds I wide readership.

Everyone needs to read “Weightless”. You are most likely not going to enjoy it. It will make you uncomfortable. If you are an adult, it will probably make you uncomfortable from two perspectives. Read it anyway.

“Weightless” is written in first person singular, with the narrator never being identified aside from their inclusion through the use of “we.” This is very difficult to pull off, but works perfectly in this situation. At the beginning of the book, you already get the sense that you do not like this “we”, but are not sure why. As it goes on, you begin to dislike them more and more. Then it happens: you are part of the we, unless you are an adult, in which case you were. Maybe you weren’t a bully, but at some point in our lives, we all have looked the other way when we could have done something. The adults are shown to do the same, especially when ignoring troubling social media, which has completely changed the landscape and ease of bullying.

Bullying, anorexia, mental illness, and peer pressure are all addressed in “Weightless”. There is also a good dose of the hypocrisy that can be found through churches, schools, and civic groups. Some of the things that occur are big events, but most of them are small and accumulate like a snowball. It’s well-done and leaves you surprised even though you know, at least in a sense, how it will end. The characters are fleshed out, but only in terms of how a peer would view them, which means an extremely unreliable narrator who is in denial throughout most of the book.

I recommend “Weightless” to those seventh grade and up, including adults. Being confronted with how easy it is to become unknowingly apathetic is a real eye-opener, and my hope is that it will help all of us pay attention and not miss a small opportunity to do something that will make a big difference.

While the "outsiders" perspective might confuse some at first, this unique way of telling the story is integral in conveying the tone of the novel. I found this novel impossible to put down and everything in it important and true. I had to convince myself not to be annoyed at the narrators' tendency to react to and describe everything in superficial terms, because this is exactly how many teens see their world. This book is going to captivate its intended audience and I can already think of several mature students I will recommend this to. We studied Phoebe Prince and her bullying-turned-suicide case earlier this year and many of the situations in this book reminded me of Phoebe's story.

Wow, this book should be compulsory reading for all parents and teenagers!

It tells the story of the typical "new girl" at high school. Carolyn has just moved into the area and doesn't know anyone at the local high school. She is a bright, talented student, who is just keen to fit in and make some friends. Unfortunately she befriends the ex-boyfriend of one of the clique of girls, and from there on she goes from being a normal girl to a victim of unfounded gossip. The clique even stalks her Facebook account and their comments and posts about her grow legs with each entry. It shows just how social media has changed things these days, sometimes not for the better.

The novel is told from the first person perspective. "We" are not named throughout the novel but that is not important to the story. This book should make teenagers think before they make assumptions about people, and how dangerous these assumptions can be, both to the person they are talking about, and what they can lead to for themselves as well.

This is a debut novel by Sarah Bannan and is one author to watch out for. It would make an excellent Book Club read as well. Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book has been written in a really interesting way. The narrator is never revealed, just known as 'we' watching the events of the book play out before them. I had a picture in my head of a group of girls on the periphery at high school, not popular enough to be in the it crowd and not different enough for anyone to notice them.
The story focuses on new girl Carolyn arriving to town, this is a really big deal as nobody new ever arrives and everyone is immediately fascinated with her, she seems glamorous and like she has seen way more than they have in their small town. Boys are drawn to her and the girls want to be her and it doesn't take long before she is getting bullied. It creeps its way into the story slowly before things get really out of hand. She makes several enemies along the way and the narrator just stands by and watches from the sidelines. One thing I loved about this book is the relationship between Carolyn and the narrator as I genuinely couldn't work out whether they loved her or hated her, it was like an absolute obsession with her which started with looking up every single thing she had done in her old town online, stalking her Facebook and Instagram accounts and progressed to rummaging through her school bag and cupboards, it was like she was a drug they were addicted to and they had to know every little thing about her. It is pretty obvious as you read along how the story is going to end but that doesn't hinder the experience at all, it is an extremely powerful story about bullying getting really out of control which makes me so glad my school days are way behind me.

Very intriguing book. The basic premise isn't new, new girl moves to a small town, but from that point on, it becomes so much more. This book becomes one in which the focus turns to bullying and the results that can be brought from that. It's definitely not a lighthearted, feel-good story but it really resonates with the world today.

This was nothing like I expected it to be. Yet it quite easily and most definitively got placed on my ''favorites'' shelf. Because this was a most memorable story. You know what? I'd actually recommend not reading the synopsis entirely, because I did and almost didn't read the book because of it. It sounded too... unoriginal, overdone, predictable, when it was much, much more than ''another'' story dealing with heavy and impactful subjects.

In an authentic, gripping, realistic and moving way, Weightless focused on bullying and mental illness from an exterior point of view, a first person plural one. We all have read books in the first and third and maybe even second person singular… but plural? This was a first for me. An excellent first.

''She was thin before, and she was thinnier now—we tried to get the guys to say it was gross, to say that they liked to have something to hold on to. But they didn’t say much and deep down, or maybe not even that deep, we wanted her body to be ours. To know what it would be like to be that light, to be that invisible, to be weightless—that was something we wanted to know.''

The writing was extremely compelling. Usually, the narrator in a story is the one being bullied or the one around whom bad things happen, but not in this case. And that's one of the things that made this book stand out for me. It was very interesting to get under the skin of everyday students, at a high school, being witness of intimidation.

It was especially thought-provoking and brought to my mind some questions: would you have done the same thing, reacted the same way? Would you have said someting, stood up for the person, helped her when clearly seeing everything crumble around her?

Recommended to fans of All the Rage!