This Song Will Save Your Life

First off, I really enjoyed my time reading this book and I thought it was a very sweet and well-done YA contemporary, although not groundbreaking or massively original. I wish I had read this book back when I was 13 because I know I would have absolutely loved it then, which is a little bit of my problem with it now. The main character, Elise, is 16, but she seems more like 12 or 13. Most of her thoughts and feelings seem very much at the surface and there isn't a whole lot of depth or discussion with her, which is more of what I would expect from middle grade. All of the things that happen to her in school as well definitely don't seem like they take place in a high school setting and much more like a middle school. I had to suspend my disbelief for a lot of this story with many of the different plot points. I did enjoy how much music was a part of this story and I listened to The Smiths the entire time while reading it. The writing was not terrible by any means but had that very dramatic and angsty tone of a teenager without any sort of refinement or real “writing” put into it. That's no necessarily a bad thing, but it made the reading less enjoyable for me, at least. One thing I can't stop thinking about with this book is the (suicide attempt) at the beginning of the book. It was very graphic and I found it to be very triggering and I didn't know about it going in. I wish I had so I could have been more prepared. But all that aside, I really did have a good time with this book. It was a quick read that reminded me of my emo middle school days and I can definitely see the merit in it. Just a bit more polishing could have made this book much better.