Pretty Girl-13 by Liz Coley (review)

Thirteen-year-old Angie doesn't scream or struggle when a man abducts her in the woods during a Girl Scout campout; instead, she listens to a voice inside her head telling her to hide and retreats inside herself. Three years later, she appears on the street in front of her old house, convinced that she is simply returning from the camping trip the next day like she was supposed to, and she's therefore surprised and horrified to discover that she doesn't recognize her now sixteen-year-old body. At first diagnosed with amnesia, it soon becomes clear that Angie suffers from dissociative identity disorder, and she and her therapist uncover four other personalities. As Angie works through her therapy, she is given the option to undergo an experimental surgical treatment, and she has to decide whether to proceed with talk therapy that could integrate her alters or surgery that will remove them, along with all their memories. This is a fascinating premise, especially as teens are working through their own identity issues and transformations, and Coley couches Angie's disorder in a gripping, ripped-from-the-headlines storyline with plenty of suspense, plot twists, and pathos. Given the scarcity of medical consensus about the disorder, the portrayal of its effects is open for speculation; we've come a long way from Sybil, however, and Angie is a likable heroine with admirable survival and coping skills, with and without the help of her alters. While readers may not agree with all of her decisions about which memories to withhold and which to expose, even to herself, they will certainly find themselves emotionally involved in her story from beginning to end.