Title: Invisible 
Author: Jeanne Bannon
Publish Year: 2/20/16
Length:   180 pages

Overview

Lola’s not pretty. Lola’s not popular. Lola wishes she could disappear … and then one day she does just that…

For seventeen-year-old Lola Savullo, life is a struggle. Born to funky parents who are more in than she could ever be, Lola’s dream of becoming a writer makes her an outsider even in her own home. Bullied and despised, Lola still has the support of her best pal Charlie and Grandma Rose.

Not only is she freakishly tall, Lola’s a big girl and when forced to wear a bathing suit at her summer job as a camp counselor, Lola’s only escape from deep embarrassment seems to be to literally vanish. Soon after, she discovers the roots of her new “ability”.

Slowly, with Charlie’s help, Lola learns to control the new super power. The possibilities are endless. Yet power can be abused, too…

When tragedy strikes, Lola must summon her inner strength, both at home and at school. She has to stand up for herself, despite the temptations and possibilities of her newfound super power.

My Thoughts

To be honest, this isn’t a book that i’d typically gravitate towards, yet i was more than happy to give it a chance.  I don’t know that it’s for me persay though – but i’ll give you a sense of what it’s about and why.

Here we have a coming of age type story – about a girl who’s got a rough lot at life – she’s not the accepted type – she’s overweight and maybe not the most open to making friends, aside from her best friend Charlie who’s really quite pretty – but chooses to be more goth than anything else.  Typical to the life of a teen, Lola has a much better relationship with her granmother than her mother, and that’s partly due to the fact that her mother is more hippie than mom.  All adding up to a very tough life for a high schooler .

The interesting twist here is that Lola finds that she’s got this tendency to go ‘invisible’ at times that are stressful.  the first time is at camp when she’s a counselor and has to put on a swim suit – a feat that she’s avoided for 3 years.  the second time is when she’s getting beat up by a bunch of bullies on her way home.  So you can see, it’s times that are really stressful that make this happen.

The problem then being though is that it’s few and far between when this power comes into play at least in the beginning and she’s got to come to terms with what it means, why it’s caused and can she trust anyone with the knowledge.

Throughout this book, we see how Lola lives her life, and how this invisibility comes into play during key moments.  While not overly belieavable, it can be seen as a metaphor for how all teens wish that they could disappear from time to time when they are dealing with situations that aren’t that great.

So – for those of you who know what i typically read, you can see how this is out of the ordinary, but i think that it’s always nice to break up the routine with something different.  While it’s decently written, i feel like there were times when i wanted to skim through to get to the next moment and see something happen, but all in all, it was a nice gentle way to finish off my weekend of reading.  Have a great week all!