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The Sky between You and Me Kindle Edition

by Catherine Alene (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 19 ratings

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An emotional and heart wrenching novel about grief and striving for perfection.

Lighter. Leaner. Faster.

Raesha will to do whatever it takes to win Nationals. For her, competing isn't just about the speed of her horse or the thrill of the win. It's about honoring her mother's memory and holding onto a dream they once shared.

Lighter. Leaner. Faster.

For an athlete, every second counts. Raesha knows minus five on the scale will let her sit deeper in her saddle, make her horse lighter on his feet. And lighter, leaner, faster gives her the edge she needs over the new girl on the team, a girl who keeps flirting with Raesha's boyfriend and making plans with her best friend.

So she focuses on minus five. But if she isn't careful, she's going to lose more than just the people she loves, she's going to lose herself to lighter, leaner, faster…

"Sit quietly with this book. Feel the wind, the dusty air. Taste the sorrow and the wonder. Listen to the heart that is beating on every page. Then be grateful that Catherine Alene gave us this stunning story. It's a thing of beauty." —Kathi Appelt, Newbery Honor and National Book Award Finalist

Print length

500 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Sourcebooks Fire
Publication date

February 7, 2017
Reading age

14 - 17 years
Grade level

8 - 12
File size

1938 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Not Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
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E.J. Schwartz
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Kindle Edition
1 offer from $999

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Gr 10 Up—Raesha is determined to win Nationals. She and her horse, Fancy, must make the best time in the barrel race, and Rae has to be as light as possible. So she begins to deprive herself of food. To complicate matters, a new girl is flirting with Rae's boyfriend, Cody, and trying to steal Rae's best friend, Asia. Rae copes by creating her own world, where everything is about control, from keeping track of calories to counting seconds on the clock. Her mantra is "lighter, leaner, faster," and the scale must be "minus five." Drawing from personal experience referenced in an author's note, Alene has crafted a novel in verse that articulates the slow decline and ongoing recovery of a teen battling anorexia nervosa. The story's scope shows how deep and complicated anorexia's hold can be; Rae's need for control extends beyond her own immediate situation to her grief over her mother, also an equestrian, who died of cancer. What if Rae can no longer fit on her mother's saddle? What if she can keep the scale at minus five? What if she could have stopped her mother from dying? Raw and heartbreaking, Alene's work tackles a very sensitive topic with accuracy and compassion. VERDICT This title will resonate with readers on many levels. A first purchase for most older YA collections.—Erin Holt, Williamson County Public Library, Franklin, TN

Review

"This powerful tale is a realistic portrayal of the difficulties many go through every day with an eating disorder." - PopCrush.com

"Alene has crafted a beautifully written novel about a teen dealing with grief and struggling with an eating disorder... The fact that it is written in verse enhances both the setting and the characters. Readers will be immediately drawn to Rae and root for her on her path to recovery." - VOYA Magazine

"Through poetry, the voice of the main character, Rae, and the voice of the author, herself a survivor, this book expresses the painful and critical discovery of self-worth and power that is gained when individuals accept that they are more than a disease... This one is worth the time and the tears.
" - School Library Connection

"Raw and heartbreaking, Alene's work tackles a very sensitive topic with accuracy and compassion. This title will resonate with readers on many levels.
" - School Library Journal

"Writing in free verse, debut author Alene vividly conveys Rae's spiral into anorexia...an illuminating account of a girl struggling for control of her life and body." - Publishers Weekly

"Alene, a recovering anorexic, skillfully conveys Raesha's increasing withdrawal from worried friends and her fixation on counting calories and exercising. But this is much more than a problem novel. Raesha's Western world is beautifully evoked, from the "Breathed blue" of the sky to the camaraderie between the girl and her horse and dog" - The Washington Post

"This debut provides an intriguing and valuable perspective."" - Booklist

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01LZ8LF5D
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sourcebooks Fire (February 7, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 7, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1938 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 500 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1492638536

Best Sellers Rank: #2,823,272 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #424 in Teen & Young Adult Poetry eBooks
- #468 in Teen & Young Adult Fiction on Depression
- #1,285 in Tragic Dramas & Plays

Customer Reviews:
4.1 19 ratings

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Bethany Harmon

Vivid, believable, and touching!

Reviewed in the United States on February 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

Vivid storytelling that had me hooked after only about 10 pages!
In terms of style, this reminded me of Sharon Creech's Love that Dog and Kathryn Erskine's Mockingbird. Reading this book gave me more than a glimpse into the struggles of juggling identity in the face of contradictory (yet coexisting) beliefs and goals. The author does a fantastic job of setting the main character in the context of her past and future life, and showing how the main character's relationships with family, friends, and the larger community have shifted over time in response to events that feel outside of the main character's control.
Love this book, and would highly recommend it!

One person found this helpful

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johnetta fulton

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on February 14, 2018

Good book

Had it's ups and downs.

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2017

I was so excited to read this because one, I love books written in verse, and two, I knew it was going to be covering an important topic. Now that I’ve read it, I’m left with a lot of mixed feelings. There were so many times where I was beyond frustrated. I nearly marked this as DNF twice. However, it portrayed the topic very realistically. I’ll admit that I don’t have very much knowledge when it comes to eating disorders but you could tell that this author knew what she was writing about. The frustrating part? For a good chunk of the book other things overshadowed that important topic.

The Sky Between You and Me is about a girl named Rae who is a competitive horseback rider. She and her friends compete in their town’s rodeo every year and this year Rae is determined to win at Nationals no matter what. While in the midst of struggling with how much she misses her mom (who passed away before the beginning of the book), her eventual obsession with winning, and the introduction of a new girl who seems perfect in every way that she isn’t, Rae begins to develop an eating disorder.

Sound pretty straight forward? It wasn’t. In the beginning, when we’re first introduced to the new girl, Kierra, an accident happens that leads to Rae not liking Kierra at all. By accident, I mean that Kierra had no control over what happened. The dislike that said accident fosters leads to a lot of friendship and boy drama that takes up about 75% of the book and at times completely overshadowed what I knew the author was trying to accomplish.

There was also this one part with Rae and her group of friends where her best friend, Asia, actually calls her out on not eating in front of everyone. The words that were spoken and the manner in which it happened had my jaw dropping. I couldn’t believe it. What “best friend” does that? Toward the end, the author tries to give Asia some redemption but I couldn’t get past that.

And don’t even get me started on her boyfriend, Cody. That is a whole other can of worms that I don’t even have the energy to open. He also made an offhanded comment that I really didn’t like. In the beginning I liked him but by the end I couldn’t stand him.

So, yeah, I felt that most of this book lacked in the friendship department. It had its moments but they were far and few between.

All of that aside, there were aspects of this book that made me glad that I choose to stick with it.

The portrayal of a family struggling with loss – Rae and her dad are both struggling with the loss of a wife and mother. The way Catherine Alene wove this family dynamic was so honest and heartbreaking. Books written is verse require very little in the realm of words but it didn’t even matter because I could feel the grief they were going through and it broke my heart. I also loved the relationship Rae and her dad had. Sure, it was a bit strained at times but they had a great father/daughter relationship.

The way in which Catherine Alene wrote Rae’s growing struggles as she develops an eating disorder was so raw and realistic. I can’t even count the number of times that I sat there reading with tears in my eyes because all I wanted was for someone to notice how much Rae was struggling. Not point it out in a negative fashion like her friend did but notice so that they could get her the help she needed. You could tell that the author knew firsthand what she was portraying in Rae. Which is something that she actually goes into detail about in her author’s note.

Also, the ending. I won’t go into any detail but it wasn’t an ending wrapped up in pretty bows. It was realistic and I enjoyed that fact.

Is this a book that I would recommend to everyone? If you can push past everything that frustrated me then I say go for it because it does depict an important topic very well. However, a lot of the bad did overshadow the good and if you're a reader who does get easily frustrated, like me, then you may want to pass on it.

One person found this helpful

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Sarah A.

An honest novel in blank verse about a girl with an eating disorder.

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2017

This novel wasn't what I expected. When I read the description on Netgalley, I saw it as a chance to read something different from what I usually read. It's not a fantasy, which I read a lot of, and it was about a girl who rode horses, and I thought that might be cool. This book is about so much more than that, though. First, it was written in blank verse, which was unexpected as that wasn't mentioned anywhere in the description. I initially balked a little, because I don't read a lot in verse, but I'm glad I persevered. Second, it's about a girl who rides horses in rodeo (which was not what I envisioned) and who is also anorexic.

The girl is named Rae. She lives with her father, who travels a lot for work. Her mother has passed away. There's also a new girl in town, who seems to be making friends with Rae's best friend and flirting a lot with Rae's boyfriend. As we listen to Rae, whose thoughts and story are fragmented and disjointed by the blank verse format, we see her need for control evolve into the controlling of her food and her obsession with becoming "lighter, leaner, faster" so she can go to the Rodeo Nationals. Since you are in Rae's head, you can utterly understand her situation and where she is coming from. Everyone on the outside she's having problems with seems like the enemy. While you know that what she is doing isn't healthy, you see from her thoughts why she thinks it is and why she's doing it. I had strong feelings of empathy with Rae throughout, and I admit there were times I cried.

What I really appreciated about the book was that Rae's anorexia was real and authentic. It wasn't glamorized and (spoiler alert!) it wasn't magically fixed. I think the authenticity here comes from the author. This book is an own voices read. Catherine Alene's author note at the end explains that she has battled anorexia and is in recovery. I think this is a really important YA read for this reason. So many times In media, anorexia is struggled with and then recovered from, all in a short space of time. Here, Rae struggles. She isn't cured. As I read this book, I thought of a friend who has battled an eating disorder since middle school, and I felt like I knew her a little better after reading this.

The writing style here isn't for everyone, but I don't feel like this story could've been told another way. I think as a prose novel, the power of Rae's thoughts and obsessions as presented here would have been lost in longer sentences and exposition. As it is, this shows the struggle of a realistic character with anorexia and how the reactions of her friends and boyfriend and father either feed her negative thoughts or show her what needs to change. As her thoughts change over the course of the book, so do your perceptions, and therein lied the real power of the book for me. I highly recommend this if you are looking for own voices books about mental illness or invisible disabilities. I also highly recommend it for anyone struggling to understand anorexia and who wants a realistic take on what the thoughts are that feed it. I applaud Catherine Alene for having the courage to turn her own experiences into this novel.

Note: I received this book from Netgalley and the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

One person found this helpful

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Mariyah

Amazing

Reviewed in the United States on May 6, 2020

I love this book it’s an amazing read and love the author.

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