Guest Book Review: Every Ugly Word by Amiee L. Salter!

Every Ugly Word
Author: Aimee L. Salter
Publication Date: July 29, 2014
Published: Alloy Entertainment
Reviewer: Lametria

My Rating:

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.

There is no escape, every word, every ugly word is always there. In the school hallways, and coming from the mouth of the person that is supposed to love you most in the world. Ashley can’t escape the words, she can’t escape all the people around her who hate her and literally tell her to “Just died already,” and her mom who uses every chance she gets to tell her, “You would be so pretty if you just lost a little weight.”

That’s just a little snippet of the words Ashley has to endure on a daily basis, and even her best friend, Matt, the only person in the world she can trust and depend on is starting to bring her down by dating one of her worst enemies. He forces her to let go of the past and start fresh and befriend the people who taunt her, and it doesn’t help that her future self is right there in the mirror, making her feel crazy and yet she runs to her for advice, but of course there is always a secret, something Ashley’s future self isn’t telling her, but the future is always a secret, it can always change.

I can honestly say I hated reading this novel, but only because I hate people. I hate that people have the power to hurt people for no reason. I hate that Ashley was so tormented and had no one to turn to, not even her own mother. Her mother was her first bully, the person to start her self-doubt and low self-esteem and that just escalated when her schoolmates joined in on the bullying. I’ve been bullied, not to the extent Ashley has, but it still hurts, it still sucks and just reading this novel was so terrifying for me because I was afraid of what was going to happen to Ashley next. 

While reading this, you become Ashley and feel everything she feels and it’s scary to read, but only because it sucks to feel this way. Who wants to feel like shit every day? Why do people hurt other people? What joy do they find in hurting others? I would really like to know, but I don’t think I ever will, because the most common answer is they have a trouble home life or they were bullied or some bullshit like that. In my opinion, if you were bullied, why continue the cycle? If you have a troubled home life, why take that out on someone who has no idea what’s going on in your home? It’s so stupid and it just pisses me off.

Overall, I did like this novel, although it was very hard to read. I recommend this novel to all the bullies in the world, and to just everyone in the world, because everyone in the world needs to feel something, and reading this novel will definitely make you feel something. 3.5 stars!