Death by Society

Two sides of the same coin, Abby is the popular girl who uses her razor-sharp tongue to keep things painfully real, while Carter is the solitary introvert just trying to get through school as inconspicuously as possible. Abby just can’t help but bully Carter, but it’s Abby’s best friends who push Carter over the edge after a particularly heinous rumor based on Carter’s anxiety meds.

When Abby realizes they’ve gone too far, she leaves school fearing the worst and discovers Carter in the midst of a suicide attempt. Her quick response gets Carter into an inpatient facility, but there’s something in Abby’s past, something that might make her realize she has more in common with Carter than she thought.

Eye-opening and brutally honest, this chronicles the experiences of both the bully and the bullied. What it lacks in cohesion, it makes up in honesty; readers can tell it was written from a place of personal experience and anguish. Diverse in character and peppered with triggers (suicide, self-harm, rape), this is genuine. True. It hasn’t been watered down trying to create a story—this is real pain expressed through words and with a brutal look at female relations in high school.