Waiting on Wednesday: Pretty Girl-13 and The Language Inside

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and features books that we just can't wait to get our hands on!

This week's Psychtember WoW picks are:

Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley

From the author's website:

"Angie Chapman was thirteen years old when she ventured into the woods alone on a Girl Scout camping trip.

Now she’s returned home…only to find that it’s three years later and she’s sixteen—or at least that’s what everyone tells her.

What happened to the last three years of her life?

Angie herself doesn’t know.

But there are people who do—people who could tell Angie every detail of her forgotten time, if only they weren’t locked inside her mind.

With a tremendous amount of courage and support from unexpected friends, Angie embarks on a journey into the darkest corners of her mind. As she unearths more and more about her past, she discovers a terrifying secret and must decide: when you remember things you wish you could forget, do you destroy the people responsible, or is there another way to feel whole again?

Liz Coley’s alarming and fascinating psychological mystery is a disturbing—and ultimately empowering—page turner about accepting our whole selves, and the healing power of courage, hope, and love."

This one sounds like it could have a lot to do with trauma and amnesia....looks dark! Even the title seems creepy...

The Language Inside by Holly Thompson

Goodread's description:

"Emma Karas was raised in Japan; it's the country she calls home. But when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer, Emma's family moves to a town outside Lowell, Massachusetts, to stay with Emma's grandmother while her mom undergoes treatment.
 

Emma feels out of place in the United States.She begins to have migraines, and longs to be back in Japan. At her grandmother's urging, she volunteers in a long-term care center to help Zena, a patient with locked-in syndrome, write down her poems. There, Emma meets Samnang, another volunteer, who assists elderly Cambodian refugees. Weekly visits to the care center, Zena's poems, dance, and noodle soup bring Emma and Samnang closer, until Emma must make a painful choice: stay in Massachusetts, or return home early to Japan."

This one sounds really fascinating not just from a psychological perspective , but also a cross-cultural one. I have a personal interest in all things Japan (I taught English for a year there), so perhaps I'm biased, but I'm looking forward to seeing how Emma adapts to life in the US. I'm also interested in how the locked-in syndrome is portrayed, in particular Zena's interactions with Emma.

What books are you waiting for?