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Reviewed by K T Bowes for Readers' Favorite
In To the Stars, Niki O'Malley is the stereotypical 'fat kid' with bad eating habits, social isolation, and bullying issues. Her poor self-image is self-perpetuating and her disconnection from her family is inevitable. But inside the body of someone who self-medicates with chocolate, author Suzanne M. Hurley paints the picture of a child feeling abandoned and struggling with guilt, her father wiped out in a car accident after an argument with her. Niki feels that she has lost absolutely everything and the reader first meets her as, seriously depressed, she contemplates opting out of life altogether. With a lot of magic and not a little superstition, she begins to find rescue in the act of reaching out to others. The novel is a journey, on which the reader accompanies this struggling teenage girl's faltering steps into recovery, where she discovers that things are not always as they seem and she is not the only person hurting in her world. The novel ultimately offers hope, that bad circumstances can be overcome when we open ourselves up to both giving and receiving love, and is proof that Cinderella can occasionally get the castle and the prince.
Niki's character speaks to a large proportion of the world's teenagers, many of whom have been her. I was fascinated by the skill with which Suzanne M. Hurley is able to make the reader really feel Niki's pain with a realism as if she had been there herself. The novel deals with some knotty issues, not talked about enough, but which a cross section of teenagers deal with privately: grief and loss, low self-esteem, bullying, suicide, guilt, eating disorders, alcoholism, drugs and truancy. What's effective about this novel is that the author fleshes out the real, hurting people behind the statistics. They aren't just a number in a report; they are an actual person, who may live down your street, or cross your path and possibly even be avoided because of some oddity in their behaviour. It is an emotional novel, well written but light-hearted enough to appeal to teenagers, who would automatically reject any attempt at preaching or lecturing them about life choices. It was very tastefully executed and enjoyable.
