Book review: This Song Will Save Your Life by Leila Sales

Farrar Straus Giroux, 2013

This book is about a misfit trying to find her place in the world. For most of her life, Elise has been an outsider when it comes to making friends. So the summer before her sophomore year, Elise uses current trends and fashion in one last attempt to be accepted by her peers. However, it goes horribly wrong, and Elise attempts suicide but realizes that she isn’t serious about it. When Elise, an avid music lover, has trouble sleeping, she goes on long walks, and one night she happens upon a hidden dance club. Elise feels that she has finally found a place to fit in with the kids in the club in addition to the DJ playing the music.

Elise’s road to acceptance and freedom isn’t smooth, and through the bumps along the way she finally finds who she’s meant to be. Elise is smart and funny and very relatable. She is so real and suffers from such a painful combination of self-scrutiny, naivety about others, and deep convictions about what’s really important in life and who is really on her side, half of which are wrong. Most of her observations and sentiments are spot on, though some of her interactions with her family seem to be her pretending to be someone else. It does deal with tough subjects of suicide, fitting in and cyber bullying in a moving, insightful, inspiring and often comedic way.

Elise’s love of music is a huge part of her story, and there are many references to bands and songs throughout, so some teens or twenty-somethings will love it. Older readers might not be interested enough to follow Elise on her journey of self-acceptance. Others will see it as a brilliant story about a young woman trying to find where she fits in the world, discovering her talents & joy through music and finding her own sense of community which will make it a fun, inspiring read.

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