The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart
My name is Jasmine. I am 11 years old and live in Ketchum, Idaho. I love ski racing, snow/winter, and many other fun things.
The words we keep inside of us are the words we don’t say to cover up our true feelings. All those words get bottled up inside of us until we just can’t stand it anymore. They start to become these monsters inside our heads that tell us we are not good enough. Lily Larkin, a high school girl, struggles with these monsters every day. Everyone sees Lily as a perfect straight A student, amazing athlete, and friend. But inside she’s falling apart bit by bit. After Lily finds her sister Alice in the bathroom hurting herself, the monsters start to get worse. Lily ignores them and focuses on being the perfect girl she’s supposed to be. However, a few months later Alice comes home from her treatment program, and it’s getting harder for Lily to ignore the monsters. Peculiarly, when she meets Micah, a boy who went to the same treatment center as Alice. Micah is determined to get Lily to not only understand Alice but herself too.
Lily isn’t so sure about this because she has secrets too. However, it’s going to be hard to keep her secrets when Lily and Micah are placed as partners in a huge poetry/art project that involves finding poetry in unexpected places. The words that Lily holds back desperately want to come through and maybe they’re the answer to writing the best poetry. Yet if she shares them, what will Micah and the world think of her then?
This book has magical poetry that reaches so deep, romance, action, love, healing, grief, family, and most importantly acceptance. I would recommend this book to anyone else, for it gives a huge look into mental illness, even if you’re not suffering through it yourself it’s interesting to see how other people might feel during their experience.
