Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am amazed at all the five star reviews for this book. The writing itself is quite horrible. The author has no idea about sentence structure or punctuation. The book consists of many run-on sentences and sentence fragments along with words used improperly and misspelled. Parts are repeated numerous times. It wasn't easy to even get through the story. The overuse of the word whilst was also very irritating. SPOILERS: My other problem with the book is that people take everything at face value. Yet if readers paid any attention to the story there are a lot of contradictions in it. At one point the author says her bedroom was pitch dark and that to scare her more, her mother made shadows. You need light to make shadows so it couldn't have been pitch dark if that was happening. She talked about Bryn Tyn, where her clothes were kept in a locker and had to be checked out daily. She then goes on to talk about how she and two friends decided to run away and because it was winter they made sure they had warm clothes and they wrapped themselves in "layers and layers of clothing." How is that possible if all their clothes are kept locked up? Then of course, they were picked up by a car with a man who was a suspect in a murder of another 12 year old girl. Seriously? I think there was a lot of fiction in this story along with a little truth. Like when Glenda the bully beat her and she told no one (even though she'd been telling on Glenda before) and after that Glenda changed and was nice. I've never seen a bully who reformed that quickly. There was also the time she went to the girl's school where she was the only one from a children's home (where did all the other girls from the home go to school?) and after school, "all the parents would be gathered outside the school gates, arms wide open to greet their angels, and I was greeted by a member of staff checking their watch as they were coming to the end of their shift". Talk about exaggeration! There were other things that didn't ring true throughout the book. The author should also do a little research. Just because she didn't know about something doesn't mean it didn't exist. She called quilts "inventions for the future" but I can't believe anyone doesn't know quilts have been around since long before the 1960s. She also talked about how scarce cars were in the 60s. Again, not true. Many families had only one but they were hardly scarce. She talks about how poor they were, yet she and her brother had bikes and skateboards and the family had a television. That's not too poor for the 1960s and early 70s. I would have been really upset if I had paid for this book. I'm glad I only borrowed it with my Prime membership. In my opinion, it's not worth it. It's a poorly written book that doesn't ring true. People rated it highly because she said she'd been abused. The ratings are supposed to reflect the quality of the story and whether you liked it. This book wouldn't have gotten a passing grade in school, it is so poorly written and there was nothing particularly impressive about the story itself. I disagree with all the high ratings and if the author was abused I'm sorry for her but that doesn't mean this below average book deserves a high rating.