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July 17, 2012

High School: Fourteen

Fourteen by C. M. Smith
paperback, 164 pages
Published July 2011 by The Writer's Coffee Shop Publishing House
ISBN13: 9781612130422
Read July 2012
Goodreads, Amazon

Fourteen has been sitting in my to be read pile since last summer. I met C. M. Smith at The Indie Book Event in New York City and picked up a signed copy. I had read one of her online stories and really loved it.

C. M. did a great job of capturing the bitterness and the inability of one to let go that a person who has been treated unfairly. Arianna is the object of bullying at her high school. She is overweight and a social outcast. I could identify with some of Anna's feelings. While the taunting ended in middle school, I was never part of the in-crowd. I would say I was tolerated in high school. 

Anna is paired up with the most popular guy in school for a science project. He also happened to be her childhood best friend and her current crush. Through the course of working on the project, Evan discovers the real Anna. You could say he has a light bulb moment. That moment that all people who are pushed around and mistreated hope for. That moment when the bullies realize you are a person. 


While Anna's feelings and action seemed real. I had a hard time believing Evan's actions and revelation. I never really felt any emotion between Evan and Anna either. Fourteen is a pretty short book and I think more time could have been given to developing the emotional relationship between them. 


Fourteen is exactly the type of book I would have read in high school. It had all the things that attracted me to stories like Face on the Milk Carton.

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