By: Angela Macias
@Angela_owlfeed

Leaving Jetty Road is written by Rebecca Burton. This book presents the harm of eating disorders and how it leads to anorexia and how it affects one’s life, especially a teen’s life.

Anorexia nervosa is a disorder where a person is obsessed over losing weight and what they eat. There has been more than 200,000 cases per year. In the book, Lise has anorexia nervosa.

Throughout the story, she struggles to eat and see what her Anorexia is really doing to her body.

It all begins when a group of three girls make a New Year’s resolution together about becoming vegetarians. It started off well until Lise took it too far and became addicted to losing weight. She was never satisfied. Her actions and feeling started to show and her friend, Nat, worried for her but couldn’t do anything. Nat wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t want to believe that Lise has gone to a point like this.

The story goes back and forth between Nat and Lise. They both struggle and are going through some changes, but fail to talk about it to each other.

While at work, Nat meets an older man named Josh. Josh is someone who loves to cook and travels with a bicycle. Soon they ended up dating and she fell for him. Life seemed perfect in her eyes, and that caused her to be distracted from her friend Lise. However, soon, Nat reaches a point where her life is crashing down and she still had no one to talk to.

Lise was fixated on her problems and she wasn’t happy with herself. So she became vegetarian. She started off okay and eating right but she took a turn and started to go towards the extreme. She ate less and less. The more pounds she lost the more  unsatisfied she became. She continued to do this until someone finally approached her about it and that is when things flip.  

Both Nat and Lise are angry towards the end of the book. Both for different reasons. It’s not until the very end when high school is over and the truth is revealed that things start to change but for the better and Nat and Lise finally join together with their problems.