Saving Zoe, Alyson Noel

Noel, Alyson (2007).
Saving Zoe
New York: St. Martin’s Griffin9
780312355104
Genre: Realistic fiction

High school provides grief and isolation to Echo whose older sister Zoë died a year earlier, but insights gained from Zoë’s diary-a fifteenth birthday gift from Zoë’s boyfriend- about her sister’s life and death change Echo in ways she never expected.
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Fifteen-year-old Echo, is a typical teen trying to survive high school without being totally traumatized by boy trouble, friend drama, and school issues. As if she didn't have enough on her plate, Echo is also still dealing with the murder of her sister Zoë. Although it's been over a year, Echo is still reeling from tragedy that changed everything. Beautiful and full of life, Zoë was the glue that held her family together, and although the two sisters were as different as night and day, they still had a bond that Echo can't let go of. When Zoë's old boyfriend Marc shows up one day with Zoë's diary, Echo doesn't think there's anything in there she doesn't already know. But as she gives in to curiosity and starts reading, she learns that her sister led a secret life that no one could have guessed--not even Echo.
The author has created two very strong character in sisters Zoe and Echo. We meet Zoe through her diary entries, and the reader can totally understand Zoe’s desire to shake off the dust of her little hometown and become famous. Although she has done little to achieve this goal and has no plan in place to achieve this goal, it doesn’t make this dream seem any less real to Zoe or the reader. Unfortunately like many girls her age, she seems to think that just showing up in Hollywood will be enough to guarantee her stardom which makes her tragic end so painfully real. Echo who is the total opposite of her sister (academic straight arrow) who always and a strong sense of herself and never envied Zoe,, reveals her own turmoil as she tries to deal with her sister’s death and the macabre light it sheds on her. As Echo reads Zoe’s diary, she starts trying to be Zoe in the hope that this will ease some of the pain. Will Echo lose her own identity as she tries to become her sister?