Because I am Furniture by Thalia Chaltas

Anke lives everyday within an abusive home dealing with her father hurting everyone in her family but her. She feels worthless, like a piece of furniture, because she does not get a speck of attention from her father, even if it might be negative. Not being able to tell anyone she just floats on through life.

Then she makes the volleyball team, where you learn to speak up and call “MINE’ for a ball and really speak up for yourself. Her confidence quickly starts building on the court and she is making herself heard. She even starts to develop close relationships with others and even starts sparking the interest of boys.

Although she is becoming less invisible at school, she still continues to be like a dining room chair at home, invisible to the eye of anyone in her family. As the abusiveness gets worse a thought sparks in her brain that maybe if she just used her volleyball voice, she might be heard for once and hopefully put an end to this tragedy.

Over the course of her story, Anke not only grows taller and older, but wiser as well and truly becomes her own person, with a commanding voice.

This book is extremely interesting and very well written. It was written through poems and it caused the story to just float by. I was most impressed with the fact that Thalia Chaltas took a common theme in young adult literature and wrote about in a completely different perspective, the side of watching the abuse and in a way wanting it. The emotion that she was able to encompass through her lyrical prose was chilling and really made you think about both sides of the situation.

The characters in the book I felt were a little underdeveloped. While you really got to know Anke, it felt like she had no variance in her life as she talked about the same things over and over again. It made it a little dull and hard to actually imagine the story. Other then that though the book was well written and interesting.

Overall this was a great debut book that fans of Lisa Schroder’s novels will really enjoy. I look forward to reading future works of Ms. Chaltas’ as they are sure to be promising.