Contrary to its title, Patricia McCormick's Cut is not just about a girl cutting herself. Instead, we see 15-year-old Callie in a psychiatric ward, most of the book not talking about the reason for self-harming, getting her the nickname S.T. (Silent Treatment) by the other teen patients who deal with more explicable issues like drugs or food disorders. When the book first came out in 2000, it was definitely one of the first books that dealt with "teen issues" in a serious way. Obviously, after this book came out, a string of books with similar such Serious Topics (teen depression, suicide, auto-mutilation, anorexia (here and here)) has been published. For putting self-harm on the YA agenda, you've got to give McCormick credit. However, more than a decade after its release and looking at the book more objectively, it's also obvious that Cut may have been surpassed by other books in the same genre.