Safe by Aviva Bel'Harold

4 stars

Imagine your life as Mariah lives hers.

Your father walked out on you years ago. Your mother doesn't care about you, and your brother deals with drugs and has twisted friends whom you are very afraid of.

Imagine that you have no friends, are very self-conscious and are the victim of severe bullying.

This is life as Mariah knows it and on the night when she finally decides to put herself out of misery with pills and booze, she finds a ghost on her bed who can't seem to move more than five feet away from her. It's a bit of a problem when you're trying to kill yourself.

I know it sounds like another one of those teen problem books where everything seems wrong and they decide to end it by suicide, but surprisingly enough, local Albertan Aviva Bel' Harold brings originality and creativeness to this story.

This story is very well written, and I found it quite easy to immerse myself into it. The characters are well developed and Aviva shows throughout her story that no matter how bad things get, things will always work out for the best.

I think anyone who is brave enough to take a chance and read Safe will find that it is quite worth the time. Aviva shows us how easy it is to make choices that will change the course of our lives, even if those choices are not that easy to stick to.

Overall, I think this is a very good book to read and I recommend it to all teen readers.

As Aviva's first book, I say we should all applaud her for her talent and keep our eyes open for any news of another book she might be writing in the future.