The author is Natasha Friend. She has written other books like Perfect. The genre is youth fiction because this book isn't a true story. Girls should mainly read this because it's about a girl who goes through stuff with her family and a boy or two at school. The purpose is to inform people about how they should deal with stuff and not to deal with bad situations. You just have to read the book to see what the title means.

It takes place at school, a party, and her house. It takes place in present day because it tells you what's happening right at that moment. The main character is Sam. She is a thirteen year old girl who's is in the eighth grade. This book is about a girl struggling to cope with an alcoholic father. She can't even admit to her closest friends the true dynamics of her family. While Sam is dying to confide in someone about her family problems, she'd rather tell a stranger. That's why she starts the notes in the library. Sam writes about all her worries concerning her father's alcoholism on scraps of paper and places the notes in between the pages of the town library's A History of Modern Whaling --- not a very popular check-out item. To her surprise, and delight, a secret pen pal responds with advice. Problems escalate at home and at school, making her mysterious adviser finally reveal himself. In an alcohol-fueled rage, her father hits her young brother with a bottle. Sam, too, learns how to stand up for herself, and that she's not responsible for everything. Sam also attracts the attention of an older boy, Drew. And she can't believe it when suddenly Drew is attracted to her. With her home life such a mess, Sam wants more than anything for this boy to like her whatever the cost, even if it means going to a party and drinking. When Sam finds herself acting like her father, she realizes that she has hit rock bottom. That same night, she is molested by a group of boys in her grade; when she returns to school, she's called names and her locker is vandalized. You can feel that when someone says something, you know what mood they're in because of the way the spell it in the book.

"I want to keep sleeping, but the sun outside my window has other ideas: First blind her. Then jab her eyeballs with scorching-hot daggers."

"When you see a small change in your life it means its a huge change in personality and your trait"

"right now,I am my father"

I think that the author was trying to say is you can't pick your family. You can try and help them change their ways but, that won't always mean they will change. I like how Natasha wrote this book because things just fell into place, there was nothing that was just there to be there. I would recommend this book to mostly girls but guys could enjoy it too.