Booktalk: Every Ugly Word by Aimee L Salter

When seventeen-year-old Ashley Watson walks through the halls of her high school bullies taunt and shove her. She can’t go a day without fighting with her mother. And no matter how hard she tries, she can’t make her best friend, Matt, fall in love with her. But Ashley also has something no one else does: a literal glimpse into the future. When Ashley looks into the mirror, she can see her twenty-three-year-old self.

Her older self has been through it all already—she endured the bullying, survived the heartbreak, and heard every ugly word her classmates threw at her. But her older self is also keeping a dark secret: Something terrible is about to happen to Ashley. Something that will change her life forever. Something even her older self is powerless to stop

This book was amazing and it really captures the essence and how it feels to be bullied. What set this aside from other novels about bullying is that the author makes how the victim is doing one sided about her story and how she eventually accepts the bullying and welcomes it, sometimes even tries to.

This book was amazing and I really enjoyed it. The writing was amazing and it was interesting to read about something I personally have never experienced but know happens everyday. I really recommend this book to anyone with bullying experience of not. 

I received this book for review from Netgalley.

Warning this review is FULL of spoilers.

So the books starts and we don't really know what's going on we just know that something is wrong with this girl and that as 'Incident' happens somewhere along in the book. Then all this stuff goes down about her not wanting to look in the mirror that doc puts in the room and when we find out its actually because she has her 'Other Self' in there I was really interested because I liked the element of magical realism in this book.

It then goes to when she's about to give Matt that letter and she's all thinking that he's going to ask her out but then he says about Karyn. Already this early into the book I was feeling for the main character because you could tell she was devastated not only because Matt didn't ask her out but because also he asked out her bully! Of all people! 

The story progresses a bit and they get to prom and I could just tell that when the contents of her bag fell out and Finn 'helped' her get it all that he would get the letter and read it all so when it came to the point when she saw Kayrn and Finn kissing I knew that Finn would use the letter against her and I was so angry!

The bullying then came into view and you could really see how horrible they were to her and why they were horrible to her. At this point her 'boyfriend' Dex comes back and I knew something was up because he wouldn't be such a big part of the story if nothing happened with him because it was pretty obvious that Matt and Ashley were the ones the author intended everyone to want to be together.

So when they go to Finns house for that party I could see it coming and I wasn't surprised when he betrayed Ashley on Brookes wishes.

I liked how Ashley handled Matt after that happened by telling him no because of what he was about to do because he originally intended to do it with Kayrn but I think that was when you could start to see the relationship start to develop.

I enjoyed the art aspect of this book and I was really sad when Finn and Karyn destroyed her art piece because that was just cold and I was sick that people actually do that in real life.

Reading through the parts where her bullying got severe I found it hard to read not because I had experienced this or because I could relate to her position, it was just because I think anyone would find this hard to read because the authors writing make you feel connected to the main character and it's easy to feel their emotions through the book.

So we finally come to the part where the perspectives slightly change and Ashley with the doctor sacrifices herself for Younger Ashley and that was a really sad part of the book and it was then that I realised how attached I was to these characters.

Overall this book was amazing for me because it not only made me feel all the feels, it also taught me some lessons and made me realise things that not a lot of YA book have recently so this book was amazing to read. 5/5 stars for sure.

Thanks for reading and I hope to see you in my next review!

Happy Reading!

Lily x

Buy Every Ugly Word from Amazon