Reasons To Be Happy Book Review

🚨 spoiler alert 🚨 

Hey all, it’s Amelia. 

One of my main things I’m doing during quarantine is reading new books. I know most of you probably are too, so I figured that I would post this book review I wrote on the book Reasons To Be Happy by Katrina Kittle. The lexile is low, but the subject matter and writing style easily makes up for that. This is easily one of my favorite books of all time. My review has some minor spoilers, but nothing that will ruin the story. The book will also tell you where we got the idea for our weekly reasons to be happy! Enjoy 😊!

Reasons To Be Happy
Katrina Kittle
YA Realistic Fiction
Lexile: 690

          In the book Reasons To Be Happy by Katrina Kittle, Hannah Anne Carlisle’s life gets turned upside down and then gets righted again in an emotional and beautiful roller coaster of eighth grade and eating disorders. Hannah is an artistic, hopeful, and athletic eighth grade girl who loves life. She has a purple notebook that has all of her reasons to be happy written down. The reasons are supposed to help her get through her tough times, but they are nothing compared to the demon inside her, bulimia.This book is very realistic, and often graphic in describing the painful challenges of bulimia.
          Hannah faces pressure from ‘friends’ to be perfect. She wants her mom, who is dying of cancer, to see her beautiful before she dies. This want turns into a need which turns into bulimia. Hannah’s life was perfect, but then her actor parent’s fame exploded and her mother got cancer. Hannah has to leave and go to Los Angeles, leaving her life behind. Eighth grader Hannah's whole family seems full of award winning movie people, with her aunt creating award winning documentaries and her parents being famous. The expectations seem too high for Hannah in a family of ‘perfect’ people. Hannah feels constant pressure to be ‘perfect’ too, even though her mom says, "pretty is as pretty does," she still feels an underlying push to be physically beautiful, and wants her mom to see her as perfect before she dies. Hannah quickly turns to bulimia, her ‘secret remedy’, –for support.
          Her eating disorder spirals out of control until her aunt, who previously suffered with anorexia, takes her to Ghana while working on a new movie. In Ghana, Hannah gains a more global perspective, discovering that ideals of beauty can be very different from one person and place to the next. Hannah realizes that life is about being her authentic self even in the most difficult situations, and finding her beauty inside and in the way she is.
          Katrina Kittle shows that beauty is what is on the inside. And she does not hide from the harsh realities of binging and purging. Wicked Awesome Books states quite clearly how her life turns upside down saying “Her pain is deep, her loss monumental, her emotions raw”. This book is a work of art and so realistic, relatable even to people without eating disorders. This book deals with lots of emotional subjects, such as Bulimia, addiction, disease, death, and bullying. On page 74, she is remembering talking to her mom, as her mom is getting closer to death and she says; “I’d fought really hard not to cry. Aunt Izzy had cried, though, her tears dripping down onto mom’s newly red painted toenails”. On page 85, a boy she likes shows her kindness about her mom’s death, and her “eyes burned, and [she] knew” that she was going to cry again. She also feels emotional on many other occasions because of her mom’s death, her dad’s addiction, and her disorder. Another thing I love about this book is how realistic it is. It describes the disorder, not hiding from the harsh reality of eating disorders. On page 92, she writes in her journal “The SR isn’t working. My throat hurts all the time. I’m still fat. It isn’t fair. I can’t stop, though. I can’t sleep without it. I need something good. My life sucks.” This quote faces the truth of an eating disorder. It faces the way disorders feel; it faces the addiction and pain of the disorder.
          I would recommend the book Reasons To Be Happy to everyone. This story is relatable to people with or without eating disorders. Katrina Kittle shows that beauty is what is on the inside. She faces the truth of an eating disorder, showing what it is like to people without disorders. This book deals with Bulimia, addiction, disease, death, and bullying without breaking stride. In conclusion, this book is a beautiful, sad, and emotional roller coaster that people of all ages, genders, and cultures will enjoy.