Book review: Islekar

Title: Islekar
Author: Liselott Willén
Genre: Drama
Year published: 2008
Pages: ~270
A place to buy it: If you are in Sweden you can buy the e-book of Bokus.
Other: Not translated into English. I managed to find a 'real' book and not an e-book in a closing bookstore but I couldn't find anything else than the e-book to link to.
Previous book review: Utan personligt ansvar

Almost bullied Alexandra "Alex"

This story is about a girl named Alexandra but everybody calls her Alex. She lives in a small village on Åland (an island between Sweden and Finland). Her biggest wish is to get noticed by her mother but none of her parents care that much about her. In school she's almost bullied but escapes the terror because of a girl called Lisa. Lisa is overweight and because of that everyone in the entire school bullies and hate her. It's only when Lisa isn't in school that the bullies go after Alex.

Alex doesn't have any friends and she really want a friend. When a new boy, Jakob, moves to the island from Sweden he also get bullied but doesn't seem to care. Alex and Jakob develop the slight beginning of friendship but then Alex's mum begin to seemingly care more about Jakob than Alex. This makes the girl furious and her feelings shift and she hate him after that.

During the same time Alex and a mysterious girl called Sarah slowly get to know each other and the two girls from a friendship. But everything isn't what it seems and Alex love the feeling of friendship so much she is basically willing to do anything to hold onto it.

Complex but predictable

I like the plot and the way the story is formed with information coming a little bit at a time. Everything is tied together nicely at the end and I feel like the characters are complex enough to be very much real. It's a great book but the reason I don't find it stunning is because the story is too predictable. The reader get too much information and just because Alex can't fit the pieces together doesn't mean that the reader can't either.

To me, the parts that are suppose to be shocking just isn't because everything leading up to that moment made what was going to happened too obvious. That is really sad because everything else is great. The book spoiled itself while I was reading it, but besides that it was a good book that I would recommend if you can find it!