I liked this book a lot - it reminded me a little of Gone Girl, but for teens, and was also the perfect length. ( )

psychology, detained, family, disturbed, healing ( )

I think it's very important to write about women doing bad things - wicked or evil things, even - that aren't related to ideas about 'scorned' women.

Damn. I'm finding it hard to explain coherently. But it comes down to having few female anti-heroes - the closest we get is the Femme Fatale, whose risk and danger is still seen in terms of the men she interacts with.

I liked this book because the main character was complex and believable. I've been a teenage girl - I remember the intensity, the anger, the certainty that it would be this way forever and ever. And that's a side of girlhood I don't think gets explored often enough for my liking.

Young women have inner lives as complex and potentially dangerous as men. ( )

I think it's very important to write about women doing bad things - wicked or evil things, even - that aren't related to ideas about 'scorned' women.

Damn. I'm finding it hard to explain coherently. But it comes down to having few female anti-heroes - the closest we get is the Femme Fatale, whose risk and danger is still seen in terms of the men she interacts with.

I liked this book because the main character was complex and believable. I've been a teenage girl - I remember the intensity, the anger, the certainty that it would be this way forever and ever. And that's a side of girlhood I don't think gets explored often enough for my liking.

Young women have inner lives as complex and potentially dangerous as men. ( )

"Heart-Shaped Bruise" is the diary of young criminal Emily Koll, written from her prison -- a young offender's institute in England.

This book has some balls: we've got a hard-to-categorise story (is it crime? mystery? psychological? contemporary?) with a hard-to-like protagonist who's in jail for something horrible. It's a daring book, and I love it.

I was worried that I wouldn't be able to relate to Emily, who's bitter about her imprisonment, difficult to talk to, and cold to her fellow inmates. But how can I not like a girl who talks about her grief like this:

"It was like a blackness that crept into the corners of my life until everything was grey and dirty. My insides felt burned out, like if you cut me open, all you would find would be smoke. No heart. No bones. There was nothing left, just the anger."

I spent my time reading it and highlighting lines that resonated: Yes, Emily, I know that blackness. I know your pain. Your betrayal. Your black, unstoppable fury. If I'm being honest, I think it's difficult to be a woman and not know exactly how she feels. She makes it so easy to understand her story.

Even though what Emily does might be unimaginable to some of us, the pain she goes through to reach that breaking point is something most of us can relate to.

If you've ever tried to write an unlikable character, it's worth picking up this book as an example of how to do it right without losing your character's edge. ( )