Just Listen-Sarah Dessen

I was quite eager to read this book for a while before I bought it, because it sounded similar to Speak, which I really enjoyed. It wasn't though, the basic idea may be simialr, but the way the sotry is told and the sotry itself is completely different. Perhaps better, as more happens, and there is more going on.
  Annabell Greene is the girl who has everything, one of the most popular girls in school, and a model with a beautiful body. One night, though, her best friends sees her with her boyfriend, and everything goes down the drain. Annabell's family is rather dysfunctional, one of her sister's has been drvien to anorexia by the competition of modelling, and her mother lives through her daughters. Annabell has two sisters, one lives with them following a spell in easting disorder clinic, the other lives in New York. Annabell is caught between them, they both have shining personalities and she is caught in the middle. She is completely alone following the traumatic night of the party and her secret. Then she meets Owen, he has a reputation for being a bit of an angry-type after he attacked somebody in a fought, but, of course, he isn't!
  This book really pulled me in, and I found it impossible to put down! You follow Annabell on her journey to speaking up, and you reach every problem with her, and slowly watch her being coaxed out of her shell by Owen. He teaches her a new way to look at life, through music, any music. She refuses to let on anything about what has happened to her, and he doesn't understand any of what she does as a result of that. He gets disappointed and dropped without knowing what is really wrong with her, but Annabell doesn't want to lose him, and slowly she opens up to him. Through all this, her relationship with her sister, Whitney, develops as she sees that she isn't what she has always seemed.
  The character that I really sympathised with was Whitney. Modelling had driven her to refusing to eat, and she had this reputation for being sour and miserable, something she wasn't. She had a lot of unknown love inside her, was really a whole different person to what anyone thought.
  This is one of the most amazing books I have ever read, but it could be an acquired taste. I loved it, and Sarah Dessen is a very popular author, for her strong characters. You fall slowly in love with every character in it and it shows you how to face up to that thing that is killing you.