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Oct 23, 2011

Wisteriouswoman rated it:

I liked this book a lot. Even though it was one of many books about a narcissistic rich successful controlling dad I felt it had an interesting take on the daughter's experienced. She almost has a dissociative identity disorder in order to cope so you hear how she reacts to the world through the three different personalities she holds in her head. I loved her friend Lee Lee who wasn't as intense as Shawna. She was my favorite character. There was an interesting cast of other characters that mad More...

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May 21, 2011

Les rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Dec 26, 2010

Lu rated it:

This book has so many wonderful things about it, I’m finding it difficult to know where to start. First there is Shawna, who puts on this perfect face but as a narrator hides absolutely nothing. She says things she shouldn’t, she does things she shouldn’t and she is so realistic it felt like I was talking to a good friend. I was honestly sad that when I closed the book after reading it, I was never going to get to talk to Shawna again. I loved loved loved her. Even when she did terrible th More...

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Apr 22, 2010

-k The Lady Critic rated it:

This was just one of those books that I couldn’t get into and I’m not entirely sure why. I admit that I didn’t like the main character Shawna and her multiple personalities – I’m pretty sure that she was schizophrenic – and the way that she addressed these different personalities was weird.

I did like how the main focus at the beginning, in the few chapters that I read, was how she dealt with her mom suddenly coming out and moving to live with her girlfriend. I think that the issue o More...

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Mar 22, 2010

Vicki rated it:

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Dec 30, 2009

Nancy rated it:

Shawna’s mother, Penny, left the family ten years ago to move in with Fran, and neither Shawna, nor her father, has been able to accept her lesbianism. Needless to say, visits to her mother never went well, and finally Shawna tells her mother that she doesn’t want to see her anymore.
When Shawna gets a call from Fran that her mother has had a stroke and isn’t going to make it, Shawna knows she needs to go see her. She is as resentful as ever of Fran, and her two sons, who know and love her More...

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Jul 19, 2009

Suzanne rated it:

This one turned up on the Peach 2010-2011 consideration database,and I enjoyed it more than I expected, having read the author's Before, After, & Somebody in Between. I don't think I put it on goodreads, yet, though--so many books I would have to go back and remember to add and then guess what I thought of them.

Anyway, there was a bit of sensationalism to the prior book, which is not to say that teens don't like to vicariously experience the woes of others. Shawna Gallager, the prot More...

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May 07, 2009

Brooke rated it:

Shawna Gallagher has many different sides: there is Perfect Shawna: who always does and says the right things, Evil Shawna: who snaps at people and doesn't want to be good anymore, and Pathetic Shawna: who grovels at people's feet. When her estranged lesbian mother dies, Shawna is forced to deal with the many emotions that are flooding through her being. She's angry at her mother for leaving when she was young and never coming back, embarrassed over her mother's lover and children, and she's tir More...

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Sep 13, 2009

Sherwood rated it:

I simply inhaled this book, staying up far too late last night.

Shawna's mom left the family for another woman ten years ago--but now she's had a stroke, propelling Shawna back into her mother's life, and also forcing her to deal with mom being gay--and with mom dumping her. And with Mom's other family. And with Shawna's seemingly perfect, high-achiever successful doctor dad. Who is also a very, very angry man, whose anger comes out in frightening controlling behavior. And in those li More...

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May 16, 2011

Becca rated it:

Okay, so what I couldn't handle in this book was the ignorance, rudeness, narrow-mindedness of the majority of the characters. The Dad, Aunt, and Julie all made me want to throw this book against the wall. I didn't know there were people THAT prejudiced. Idk, I live in So Cal. We're pretty liberal here... Ohio, not so much, evidently?

Second of all... The point of this book was lost upon me until the end. I couldn't get into it until about the 90th chapter... (btw, who writes a book w More...

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Nov 04, 2009

Erin rated it:

Although I do enjoy a lot of realistic YA fiction, it isn't really my home genre. I'm much more of a fantasy/science fiction girl.

But I was looking at this one on our New YA shelf at the library and it just grabbed me. So I took it home and was immediately sucked in--I had a hard time putting it down, and I definitely plan on booktalking it at some point (I'm the first person to check it out at our branch, so it could use some circ!)

What really drew me in was the voic More...

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Jan 16, 2010

Jennifer rated it:

Teen daughter finds out her mom is dying. Her mom left her for a women several years before and has been raising kids with this other women. The mom never made a will or anything so the dad screws the other women every way he can and it gets really ugly.

I am not sure what I think about this book. On the one hand it shows some of the struggles same sex couples face, particularly surrounding child rearing and health. I also felt like the relationship between the main character and h More...

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Oct 20, 2009

Brittany rated it:

Shawna tries to always be "Perfect Shawna" not "Evil Shawna" or "Pathetic Shawna". It doesn't always work out that way. When Shawna's mother leaves her without a goodbye to be with her lesbian lover Fran, Shawna feels totally abandoned. Years later Fran gives her a call saying to come quickly because her mother's in the hospital and probably won't make it much longer. After her father catches wind of what is going on he intervenes, and between her mother's outdated More...

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Jan 21, 2009

Patrick rated it:

This is a very, very interesting book about the complicated nature of families. The cover gives away the use of thematic use of doubles: gay and straight; brother and sister; Catholic and Jewish.

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Apr 15, 2009

Alea rated it:

Wow, there is sure a lot packed into this book, it was emotional, powerful, and definitely original. And I think for the most part it works really well! Shawna's journey spans everything from what it means to be family, sexuality, friendship, and love, it goes everywhere. I was compulsively turning the pages of Say the Word, I had to know where it was going and had to know that everyone was going to come out of this situation ok. It was definitely stressful at times to read, especially any scene More...

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Aug 27, 2009

Melodye rated it:

Shawna Gallagher is a perfectionist, a pleaser. From all outward appearances, she's living a charmed life in a seemingly perfect world. But then tragedy strikes, and family secrets come to light, fracturing her relationships and challenging all that she has come to believe about herself and others. In this heart-breaking but ultimately uplifting story, Shawna discovers her authentic self when she learns to Say the Word.

Using brilliantly spare language, author Jeannine Garsee shows u More...

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Sep 12, 2010

Jacki rated it:

While this book initially seems like it will be the story of the heroine coming to terms with her mother's abandonment of the family for a lesbian lover, it actually winds up as the story of an ugly custody battle and domestic abuse.

The plot drags for the first third to half of the book, and the pacing retains a choppy speed-up-slow-down quality throughout.

Between narrating the story, having three different inner voices (her Perfect, Pathetic, and Evil selves) and havin More...

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Jun 23, 2010

J.Elle rated it:

Shawna's mother left her father for another woman and Shawna was never really part of her life again. This makes for some pretty heavy baggage, especially when her mother's partner calls to tell Shawna that her mother has suffered a stroke and is dying. Shawna is forced into her mother's partner's life and the lives of her two sons while trying to remain the perfect daughter to her perfectionist, physician father. Things get ugly when her mother dies having never updated her will and Shawna's More...

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Nov 07, 2011

Anna rated it:

Shawna is an ambitious and intelligent sixteen year old girl. At home however, she is very caged-in. Her father is very controlling of her, even more so since she is an only child. Her mother has just died of a stroke, but in reality, Shawna lost her ten years prior to that when her mother abondonded them for another woman. Through these series of unfortunate events, Shawna learns to value herself and stand up to her father. She also learns a few shocking family secrets that will change the cour More...

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Sep 29, 2009

Carrie rated it:

This book is a page-turner with strong characters and complex storylines. You hurt when the characters hurt, and at the end of the book, you just want to know more about all of them!

Throughout the entire book, I understood Shawna so well that there was never any question why she did what she did. Even though I disagreed with some of her choices, nothing that she did or said ever seemed out of character. Shawna is a strong, well-constructed, credible character.

This More...

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Mar 01, 2011

6jynessab rated it:

I thought it was a really good book. The book is about a girl named Shawna. Shawna's mom left her when she was little. Shawna was really mad, then on homecoming she was hanging out with guy she had a crush on for along time, an wouldnt have sex with him, so he started calling her a mean names. her mom died, an her dad took everything over. I would say people that would like this book would be the people that like reading about lives of teenagers. People that would hate this book would be people More...

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Dec 06, 2011

Mimosa rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jun 19, 2011

Hannah rated it:

This book just didn't work for me. I liked most of the ideas - they're pretty original, and I thought it would be interesting to read about a girl with a lesbian mom. A lot of interesting topics are mentioned - homosexuality/homophobia, domestic abuse, etc. - but I didn't like the execution, and I never really got the point.

My main problem are the characters. I didn't get Shawna at all. She has no real personality, always changing. First she's so ignorant and narrow-minded about her More...

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Oct 12, 2009

Coffeeboss rated it:

This book surprised me in its intensity... as another reviewer wrote, the book is quite stressful and hard to put down, as the chapters are very short, keeping the pages turning. Shawna is a high school senior, and at the start of the book her estranged mother suddenly dies of a stroke. Her mother had left her and her father when Shawna was only 7, to be in relationship with another woman named Fran. Being only a child, Shawna was extremely hurt at the "reasonless" abandonment, and sin More...

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Jun 15, 2009

Holly rated it:

This is Jeannine Garsee's second novel, and while I am a true fan of her first work, Before, After, and Somebody In Between, I expected to have difficulty liking this one much at all.

Why?

Shawna Gallagher, the lead character in Say the Word, is a rich teenager with a car, a cell phone, a laptop. I thought: How much trouble could this girl possibly have?

As it turns out, Garsee did not let me down. Just for starters, Shawna's mother ran off and set up housek More...

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Apr 01, 2009

Steph Su rated it:

Jeannine Garsee tackles the difficult subjects of homosexuality, homophobia, and family loyalty in SAY THE WORD. In particular, I found the family loyalty issue most striking. It’s incredibly difficult for an author to create a despicable character who we want to beat the crap out of, yet still empathize and understand where he’s coming from. Mr. Gallagher, and, to a lesser extent, Shawna, are two such characters. They’re flawed, sometimes with unadmirable points of view or attitudes, and yet yo More...

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Apr 02, 2009

Yan rated it:

Say the Word is a conflicting book for me. For one thing I cannot seem to make up my mind on the grading. Shawna portrayed various personalities which she describes as Evil Shawna, Perfect Shawna, and Pathetic Shawna. The Perfect one annoyed me, the Evil one I adored, and the Pathetic one I can relate to. So what happens when the main character can be separated into 3 beings? You tell me as I have no clue.

Say the Word is a whirlwind of important topics from modern today—domestic abu More...

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Jun 02, 2009

Christina rated it:

High school senior Shawna has her world pretty much begin to crumble when the phone call arrives--her mother is in the hospital, probably not going to make it. But as she goes to New York to visit her, she's not sure how she should feel: this is the same mother who abruptly left Shawna and her dad in their Ohio home when Shawna was only seven, to live with another woman, Fran ("the Frankfurter" as Shawna's best friend LeeLee calls her). So Shawna hasn't had that great of a relationship More...

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Apr 18, 2010

Anna rated it:

Shawna's mom left when Shawna was seven, to live with another woman. Fast forward ten years to her mother's sudden death. Her father, verbally abusive and controlling, decides to enforce her mom's only will, the one before her new family with Fran and her two kids, before her art gallery and her decision to become Jewish. Shawna's facing decisions about friendships, college and herself. Shawna is a flawed character, clueless and self centered at times, but develops well through the book.

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Jan 11, 2010

Thorn rated it:

I'm glad there ARE books about how it's important for lesbian moms to be honest about the kinds of families they've created and how it's bad when hospitals discriminate against same-sex partners. So yeah, make a living will and do all the paperwork you need to do! But I didn't totally buy the narrator's flavor of perfectionism and the stuff about sexual assault wasn't fleshed out at all. Plus some of the melodrama got to be a bit much. It was still a nice book, though.

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