How It Ends
How It Ends
Select a format:
Paperback ©2017--
To purchase this item, you must first login or register for a new account.
Houghton Mifflin
Annotation: Jessica is a good student who hates school because she is bullied by the "cool" girls and she is startled and grateful when Annie, the new girl in her southern Ontario high school, seeks her out on the first day of tenth grade and defends her from the bullying.
 
Reviews: 4
Catalog Number: #5909181
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Copyright Date: 2017
Edition Date: 2016 Release Date: 06/13/17
Pages: 293 pages
ISBN: 0-544-93720-1
ISBN 13: 978-0-544-93720-8
Dewey: Fic
LCCN: 2015007154
Dimensions: 23 cm.
Language: English
Reviews:
ALA Booklist

"I'm so far from popular that the light from popular would take a million years to reach me," says Jessie, a sophomore misanthrope. She's still reeling from a freshman-year humiliation and suffering from what she calls "terminal loneliness" when new-girl Annie befriends her. Annie is as outgoing and likable as Jessie is sour and reclusive. But beneath her sunny veneer, Annie is also recovering from the death of her mother and her father's remarriage to a woman she despises. Jessie and Annie's fast friendship should be binding and everlasting, everything they each need. But possessiveness and anxiety, jealousy and dependency e usually normal trappings of a deep high-school relationship llide, to unpredictable and catastrophic results. This debut novel is undoubtedly shaped by author Lo's career as a teacher in a behavior-support program for teens. As such, How It Ends feels, at points, both painfully tragic and true. Lo's lucid treatment of mental illness and risky behavior is refreshing, hard, and necessary.

Kirkus Reviews

Debut author Lo explores the life cycle of a friendship, with alternating narratives that reveal how all stories have two sides. Jessie suffers from "terminal loneliness" and lives where "the light from popular would take a million years" to reach. She enters grade 10 hoping for invisibility; she'll take her daily Prozac and endure her suburban Ontario high school. When she's suddenly befriended by new kid Annie (seemingly fearless in the face of small-minded high school drama), anxiety-plagued Jessie feels her world expand and brighten. The two white girls form an opposites-attract bond: Annie (who's lost her mother and struggles with her stepmom) envies Jessie's intact home and academic abilities; timid Jessie admires Annie's bold style and approach to life. Trouble in paradise arrives (somewhat predictably) when both fall for the same boy, but romance is refreshingly peripheral to Lo's main subject: the complexity of close female friendship. Lo (who's worked with at-risk teens) offers a nuanced exploration of stressors on this vulnerable population: the effect of social media, well-meaning parents with complicated agendas, and peer influence. She tackles—without condescending or simplifying—challenging subjects such as drug dependency and the consequences of sexual activity, offering an unflinching look at the emotional toll of abortion. A thoughtful depiction of teen friendship and the competing costs of concealing—and revealing—the truth. (Fiction. 14-18)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

After working with at-risk teens for 12 years, Lo writes her first novel, painstakingly tracing the evolution of a friendship between two vulnerable high school students in suburban Ontario. Alternating between the girls- perspectives, she first introduces Jessie, who has developed an anxiety disorder after being bullied as a freshman. Her plan to keep her -head down, focus on school, and ignore everything else- changes when new student Annie makes friendly overtures. Unhappy with her home life and tired of phonies, Annie is struck by Jessie (-She-s so painfully real that it almost hurts to look at her-). The girls quickly bond, but tensions mount when Annie is drawn to another classmate, the very girl who made Jessie-s life miserable. Lo skillfully shows how the girls- very different past experiences affect their perspectives; anger and jealousy (mixed with Jessie-s prescription-drug dependency and Annie-s longing for her late mother) complicate matters, and both girls spiral downward before they can learn to trust again. Despite dark moments, Lo-s novel is an inspiring read, revealing the power of courage and compassion. Ages 14-up. Agent: Mackenzie Brady Watson, New Leaf Literary & Media. (June)

Reviewing Agencies: - Find Other Reviewed Titles
ALA Booklist
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Kirkus Reviews
Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)
Reading Level: 7.0
Interest Level: 9-12
Reading Counts!: reading level:6.4 / points:17.0 / quiz:Q66484
Lexile: HL720L

Jessie

Here's what I wish I could say about my summer vacation:
     Working in the city was every bit as glamorous and exciting as I anticipated. My dad and I bonded over executive lunches and spent our train rides to work gossiping about our coworkers. The awkwardness that usually colors our conversations fell away, and my dad was proud of how I blossomed in the workplace, leaving my issues behind and functioning like everyone else. Down in the mailroom, I met the kids of other lawyers, and we engaged in the types of shenanigans you would expect from a bunch of teenagers experiencing their first taste of independence. On our last day, my new friends and I exchanged tearful goodbyes and promises to keep in touch online. I left work feeling ready for the new school year, knowing that the losers who torment me at school are just unsophisticated hicks who lack the intelligence and social graces to behave like decent human beings.
     Here's how it actually went:
     My father and I rode the train to work in silence. He read the paper or sent emails from his phone while I played Angry Birds on mine. Each morning, we parted at the front doors, where he gave me a heartfelt pep talk along the lines of Work hard and don't embarrass me. While he headed up to his posh office, I headed down into the bowels of the building, where a bunch of overprivileged kids pretended to work. I was greeted on the first day with about all the instruction I received all summer: do whatever the suits tell you, look busy no matter what, and what happens in the mailroom stays in the mailroom.
     After that, I pretty much spent the summer walking the fine line between working hard enough to look busy but not hard enough to make my coworkers look bad. I'd finish my duties by lunchtime and then spend the afternoon hiding in a back corner of the mailroom, reading and fantasizing about how to transform myself into an Alaska Young or Margo Roth Spiegelman.
     While my dad ate fancy lunches with clients, I snuck out to buy sauerkraut-covered hot dogs, devouring them right there on the street before scurrying back to the mailroom. I don't know where the other kids went. Most of them were the children of partners, and they looked down on me because my dad is just a regular lawyer. They moved together like a flock of birds, twittering away as they passed my desk each day at lunchtime, carefully avoiding eye contact. I'd watch them go, struggling to fill my lungs with air while the weight of loneliness settled itself on my chest.
     So basically, what I learned about the world of work is that it's depressingly like high school. There are still cliques, everyone does the least amount of work possible to get by, and the beautiful people are in charge.
     Aren't I a ray of sunshine?
     The thing is, I know there are people who have it worse than me. I don't have a terminal illness, I'm not homeless or hungry, my parents are still married after a gazillion years, and I've never had to go through losing someone I love.
     I keep reminding myself that things could be worse, but there are shades of gray, you know?
     I do suffer from terminal loneliness, I'm so far from popular that the light from popular would take a million years to reach me, my parents fundamentally disagree about how to parent a kid like me, and I've never experienced love, because I'm apparently invisible to boys.
     But on to the current crisis: tomorrow is the first day of school. Tenth grade.
     I hate school. Which is ironic because everyone thinks I love it. I'm a straight-A student (booknerd) who always tops the honor roll (loser) at Sir John A. Macdonald High School (Seventh Circle of Hell) in our quaint little Southern Ontario town (hickville) in the great country of Canada (where everything is more expensive and less cool than in America).
     It's not the idea of course work that has my stomach aching and my hands shaking. I have my fellow classmates to thank for that. Tomorrow I'll be thrust back into the same space as Courtney Williams and her pack of wolves. Tomorrow I'll be Lezzie Longbottom again.
     I blame Vogue magazine and Harry Potter. That's how it all started.
     It was a Sunday in November of seventh grade, and my mom was caught in the grip of mother-daughter bonding enthusiasm. She'd bought a stack of fashion magazines in a thinly veiled attempt to make me into someone cooler, and we were sitting at the kitchen table flipping through them and brainstorming about a makeover. That's where I found the picture of Michelle Williams and her Mia Farrow-inspired pixie cut. I was obsessed.
     It took two weeks of pleading and an hour in the stylist's chair to remove my long brown hair. While my mom's hairdresser worked her magic, I sat there imagining how sleek and sophisticated I'd look, and how impressed my friends Courtney and Larissa would be when they saw my daring hairdo. But when the stylist turned the chair around for the big reveal, I looked nothing like the adorably feminine Michelle Williams. I looked like a boy with a bad haircut.
     I spent that afternoon in tears, convinced I'd be the laughingstock of my school. I finally called Courtney that night, desperate for reassurance. As I tearfully explained my predicament, I heard laughter and voices in the background. "Do you have people over?"
     "I'm having a sleepover," she announced, as my heart flopped out of my chest and onto the floor.
     "I didn't know," I said lamely.
     I spent Sunday tugging on my hair, willing it to grow even a little bit. I practiced styling it in front of the mirror and putting barrettes in to make it seem more feminine. But no matter what I did, I looked like a pudgy little boy. A vaguely familiar-looking pudgy little boy.
     Which is where Harry Potter comes in. On Monday our teacher went home at lunchtime with a headache, and the staff rushed around trying to find a way to occupy us. Someone found the first Harry Potter movie in the back of our supply cupboard, so we settled in to watch it.
     My humiliation became complete on the train ride to Hogwarts, when Neville Longbottom appeared onscreen. That's when I realized who I looked like. Sadly, the rest of the class did too.
     Whispers of "Longbottom" started immediately, but it wasn't until recess that I became Lezzie Longbottom. It was at recess that Courtney declared me a lesbian and said that I'd cried about not being invited to her sleepover because I wanted to see them all naked.
     I'll never forget the way I burned with shame on the playground. I had nowhere to go and no one to talk to. The girls turned their backs on me and whispered about how I'd looked at them like I was interested, while the boys chanted "Lezzie" and offered me money if I kissed Courtney before recess was over.
     Even now, with hair that's grown out to shoulder length, teeth aligned through years of orthodontia, and baby fat that's melted away, I still see Lezzie Longbottom when I look in the mirror.
     If my mother wasn't such a freak, I'd beg to be homeschooled. I know how well that would go over, though. Mom takes every little thing I tell her and blows it completely out of proportion. Like when I told her about how Courtney teased me after my haircut. Mom made a federal case out of it, and the principal hauled Courtney, her mom, and my parents in for mediation. What a joke. Courtney's big blue eyes filled with tears, and she told everyone that she hadn't meant anything by it--it was just a little teasing. The very next day, she dubbed me a snitch and spread the word that anyone who talked to me would become an outcast.
     Is it any wonder I started having panic attacks and refused to leave my room?
     When the hiding out and avoiding human contact devolved into full-on depression, my mom found her new mission in life--fixing me. She's paraded me through countless doctors' offices and counselors' workshops. She buys every parenting book she can get her hands on, and has a new strategy every other day to unlock the normal kid in me. She's tried signing me up for sports, making me join clubs, taking me for "girls' days" so we can shop our cares away, and meditation classes to quiet our minds. She throws our digestive systems into turmoil with new diets that promise that the elimination of this or the addition of that will have wondrous effects on our mental health. The only thing she really hasn't tried is actually talking to me about how I feel and what helps me.
     So I gave up being honest with her a long time ago. I take my Prozac every day and pretend it's all working. I don't tell my mom about how I spend my days hovering around the outer edges of the outcasts, pretending to be interested in comic books and video games just so I have people to sit with at lunch. I don't tell her that I plan my route between classes painstakingly, avoiding certain hallways and coming late to the cafeteria line so I won't run into Courtney and her friends. And I don't tell her how lonely I am. Every. Single. Day.
     I keep reminding myself that in three years I'll be off to university for a brand-new start, while girls like Courtney and Larissa will have the best years of their lives already behind them. There'll be plenty of time for friendship then. For now, I just need to put my head down, focus on school, and ignore everything else.
     Three more years. I just have to survive for three more years.



Excerpted from How It Ends by Catherine Lo
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

There are two sides to every story.       It’s friends-at-first-sight for Jessie and Annie, proving the old adage that opposites attract. Shy, anxious Jessie would give anything to have Annie’s beauty and confidence. And Annie thinks Jessie has the perfect life, with her close-knit family and killer grades. They're BFFs . . . until suddenly they're not. Told through alternating points of view, How It Ends is the story of a friendship from first meeting to breakup, set against a tumultuous sophomore year of bullying, boys, and backstabbing.       Catherine Lo makes her debut with an honest, nuanced tale about the intricacies of female friendship.


*Prices subject to change without notice and listed in US dollars.
Perma-Bound bindings are unconditionally guaranteed (excludes textbook rebinding).
Paperbacks are not guaranteed.
Please Note: All Digital Material Sales Final.