Elevate Difference

Reviews by Jennifer Lee Johnson

Thinandbeautiful.com

As someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I was very eager to dig into Thinandbeautiful.com. This young adult book was written by Liane Shaw, a teacher who once struggled with anorexia. The story follows Maddie, an anorexic teenage girl who finds herself sucked into the "pro-ana" (pro-anorexia) website thinandbeautiful.com.

Red Lights: The Lives of Sex Workers in Postsocialist China

It’s easy to disregard sex workers, to relegate them to the margins of society and pretend that they don’t exist in the perfect little world that is uncomfortable with the idea that there are members of our population who have sex for money. Often considered an untouchable part of society (no matter what culture we’re talking about), sex workers are often overlooked in anthropological or sociological studies with many researchers content to look at the more accepted members of society rather than delve into the seedy underbelly of urban life.

The Last Secret

Secrets and lies. Can you ever really escape your past? Or do the mistakes you make when you’re young haunt you forever? Those are the questions haunting Nora Hammond, the protagonist of The Last Secret. Nora is the stereotypical rich, suburban socialite, the woman who has everything; basically, she's the prototypical victim for a literary thriller.