Speak is a realistic fiction book written by Laurie Anderson. Speak is about a girl named Melinda Sordino who experiences a tragic event during the summer before her freshman year of high school. She calls the cops at a party, this gets her hated by the entire school. Melinda goes through the year being shy, quiet, and not really having any friends. She never could get the nerve to speak up about what happened the night of the party. The only people who knew what had happened were Melinda and Andy Evans the school bully. One important message in this book is too always remember to do what’s right and never forget to speak up.

Laurie Anderson did a great job writing this book and making sure she included the content she wanted without being insensitive. She wrote with an interesting style that I had never seen before. The story was very choppy. It skips days and it vaguely describes unimportant events. Some chapters were boring and didn’t make sense but added important content. I liked reading this book because it had an interesting conflict that was unclear until the end. I wanted to keep reading  because I wanted to know what happened at the party. After that conflict was announced I felt like she didn’t include anything critical to make me want keep reading. This book confused me because I didn’t understand why Melinda didn’t speak up from the start. I would recommend this book to someone over the age of 13 that will be able to handle mature content, because of the events that happen in the book can be intense.