Gregory, Julie. “Sickened”. New York, New York. A Bantam Book. October 2003

Reason: honestly, I picked this book up because I really liked the cover-art. However, when I opened the flap and read the summery I really thought that I had picked up a good book. The setting of this book is in southern Ohio. The family lives in a trailer, which surprises me because Julie’s medical bills must be pretty high. This is definitely a mystery novel. Or like a suspense one. However, I am not completely for sure on that. It just really seemed like it. This takes place around the 1980’s I want to say, but it is never specified.
Plot: alright so, Julie’s mom has a disease. However, Julie’s mother is in full belief that Julie has a disease. Because of this Julies mom takes Julie to so many different hospitals. Her mother always believed, or tried to convince other people that there was something wrong with her daughter's health and was forever taking her to see doctors and specialists and suggesting that they perform open heart surgery on her. Whenever the doctors said that there was nothing wrong with Julie, her mother would become enraged and take Julie to another hospital. Julie Gregory was a victim of “Munchausen by Proxy”. She misses a lot of school and would be too tired to concentrate in lessons because her mother would put her on a special diet. However, Julie felt as if she couldn’t live without her mother. This is weird because of the fact that she knows that she’s not sick, and that it is all on her mother. Julie doesn’t want to hurt her mother when she is growing up. She eventually grows up. However, in the end of the book Julie went back to her mother, who had remarried and adopted some more children. She left after she discovered that her adopted daughter was suffering from the same treatment from her mother that she was given herself, and decided to prosecute her mother.
Character: I want to analyze Julie. She is a very small girl- due to the special illness that her mother believes her to have. The book describes her to be very small and lanky. In the beginning of the book they shave her chest, so I’m suspecting that she is quite hairy (they did that when she was barely 12). Julie is the main character in the book. The plot changes this character from a defenseless little girl to a woman that prosecuted her mother for the things that happened to her, and her mothers adopted daughter.
Evaluation: I loved this novel. I thought that it was written really well. There are some really neat quotes in the book that I really enjoyed. I would recommend this book to everyone. I mean this is a serious book- it’s about indirect child abuse.
This book compares to real life in so many ways. This probably happens to a lot of people, which frightens me because it would be so hard to detect. I wouldn’t of acted in the same way as Julie thought, if I knee there wasn’t something wrong with me then I would of put an end to the madness that she endured throughout the book. I think the book ended in a logical fashion, and couldn’t have really ended better.
Author: The author is Julie Gregory, the same as the main character in the book. She is an advocate for MBP abuse. Sickened is the only book that she has written and I believing her to be a fantastic author.