Wintergirls, similar to Laurie Halse Anderson's previously best known work Speak, follows a girl in high school struggling with her own personal struggle and hardship, this time being anorexia rather than Speak's rape. Our main character is Lia, a girl who has been in treatment twice for her anorexia and yet still is wrapped up in the mindset of needing to starve herself. She doesn't WANT to be better, in fact she sees no real problem with her disorder, and is very disconnected from reality. Her struggle for control and that disconnect only grows when her best friend, Cassie, who suffered from bulimia is found dead in a hotel room, presumably from her disease. 
 Whenever I see reviews or summaries of this book, people tend to quote the line "I promise to be the skinniest girl in school." This I feel gives a false impression of what the book is about. Lia's journey into anorexia is not necessarily due to cultural pressure to be skinny or the media or the desire to be, well, desired. Instead it stems from her unhealthy competitive nature of her friendship with Cassie. They both challenge the other to become skinnier than the other and over the course of years it devolves into eating disorders. One can also make assumptions about Lia's motivations for control due to her chaotic and exclusionary home life, but it is never really about WHY Lia and Cassie develop their eating disorders. Instead, the book focuses on the disconnect from reality that Lia has and how she views the world. 
 Much talk has been made of Anderson's use of typographical marks such as strikethroughs and repetition of words. It seems to be a love it or hate it feature and I for one loved it. I thought that it gave great insight into how Lia's brain was working, how the anorexia was legitimately fighting her otherwise normal want to live and be healthy. The repetition for me felt very much like a mantra she would use to try to achieve some normalcy in her life. As someone who has not suffered (thankfully) any eating disorder, but has gone through boughts of severe anxiety, that mantra like quality range true to me. Repetition can give a small sense of calm when everything else seems out of control. 
 Overall I thought this book to be very well presented in its content of the internal and external struggles of trying to hide one's eating disorder while achieving absurd weight goals. Lia's downward spiral and loss of control was excellently executed and was disturbing at times to read. The one criticism I have is that I'm not sure what purpose the character Elijah served. I kept waiting for him to pay off and he just... didn't at all. He enabled Lia to get to some locations on her own but other than that he was kinda pointless and I don't know why he was included in the book. 
 If you at all enjoyed Speak or enjoy reading YA novels tackling difficult subjects like anorexia and eating disorders, I recommend Wintergirls. It won't be the most uplifting of reads but I found the focus on Lia's mental disconnect rather than media influence to be very refreshing and compelling.