During the summer before her senior year, Melinda attended a high school party, but things went wrong. Melinda ended up calling the police, and now she is a hated outcast. But nobody knows what really happened to her at the arty: Melinda was raped by a senior. Nobody will listen to her, and after a while Melinda stops speaking all together. She isolates herself from the outside world, and her only escape is her art class with Mr. Freeman. Follow Melinda on her journey of discovering who she is and learnin to find her voice again to stand up for herself. 
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 3.75 
 So, I had to read this as a novel study for English, and most people I know really didn't like it, but I actually didn't mind it. I mean, I didn't love it, but it was pretty good. 
 I found this story to be extremely similar to Sarah Dessen's Just Listen since they dealt with the same topic and had a very similar plot and story line. However, I did enjoy Just Listen more than I did this one. 
 I found Melinda to be a very strong, relatable character, and I loved watching her grow and change throughout the book. I also enjoyed reading from her point of view. I found her to be kind of amusing sometimes, and she had a really interesting outlook on the world. 
 I also really loved the character Andy Evans. He was VERY creepy, and I was able to easily understand and feel Melinda's fear of him. He reminded me quite a bit of the character Amos from Saint Anything, and they both gave me those kinds of chills whenever they were around and I wanted nothing more than the girl to get far, far away from him. 
 Also, I absolutely loved the symbolism of the tree in the story and how it changed and grew as she did, It was just brilliant! And I really like Mr. Freeman's character and how he and his art class offered some freedom to Melinda. And it was nice to see that there was at least one adult that seemed to understand and actually had some concern with what was going on. 
 I thought that Melinda's poor family relationship was portrayed really well, and it really added to the story, and made me sympathize for Melinda more. 
 Additionally, I really liked the character David. He was so nice to Melinda, and it made me happy to see that someone cared. I just wish that she would have been a bit nicer to him. But I understood why she was the way that she was, and she had every right to be. And I enjoyed reading about how he handled all the situations with Mr. Neck. It was interesting to see, and sometimes amusing. 
 And I really like Ivy too and how towards the end of the book she formed a good relationship with Melinda and was able to understand and help her out a little bit. 
 So, overall, it was a raw, deep, and enjoyable read. I'd probably recommend it, though, like I said earlier, it was quite similar to Sarah Dessen's book Just Listen, but not quite as good.