Book Review: Letting Ana Go by Anonymous

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“Letting Ana Go” is a great book for readers who love to read real-account journal-style writing about mental illness. The Anonymous series is known for these types of real-life publications.

TW: Anorexia.

In “Letting Ana Go,” we follow a teenage girl that has everything going for. She has friends, a reciprocated crush on her best friend’s brother, and is a lead runner at her school.

However, her life starts to change when she catches her father cheating on her overnight mothers, and, consequently she witnesses her parents split up.

With her best friend Jill, she embarks on a mission to lose weight and always be thin, always be ‘pretty,’ desirable.

Slowly, her obsession with calorie counting and being skinny start to take over her life.

This story is so important. It really resonated with me. Because it is a real account, it really does show how it actually is like to live with anorexia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. 

This real-life diary is so illuminating and although I could see how others would not ‘enjoy it’ or ‘understand it’ or wish to shake the main character ‘out of it.’ But personally for me, as someone who’s suffered from eating disorders, disordered eating, body image, and intrusive thoughts and compulsion, I say that this story is needed. 

It was startling frustrating to witness – but also most frighteningly to understand on my part – how adults, specifically mothers, fat shame already healthy-looking girls into being skinnier, prettier, lighter, more delicate. 

I am somewhat recovered and did not find this triggering but I still felt heartbroken as I recognized these people in my own life, as I felt like the main character and been through similar experiences. It covers more than just her obsession with food, overexercising, and calorie counting. The emotional turmoil, the self-hatred, the obsessive thoughts, the equaling love with weight on the scale, – these realities resonate with so many children, young adults, and even adults out there. And yet, it’s portrayed so messily in the media. 

[SPOILER WARNING]

I was so devastated at the end – giving that this is a real-life diary, for fsake’s she was even at the movies watching “The Perk of Being a Wallflower” with her friends and boyfriend as well as posting and engaging in harmful “Thinspo” online, so shockingly close to my own high school experience – that she had passed away due to her anorexia. And that her boyfriend, the most supportive and loving, and healthiest person in her life was the one who had to place the call of her passing… I feel like I’ll need a few days to process this book… 

Eating disorders are REAL. Emotional distress is REAL. And books, journaling, and writing are, to me, the only bright light highlighting and exposing the reality of mental illness.

“You’re only as sick as your secrets.”

“I realized the only person I can control is me.”

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