When I first saw the powerful title of this book—Me on the Floor, Bleeding-- I knew I had to read it. It wasn’t what I expected it to be at all. I thought it would be about a girl struggling with life as she knew it and trying to break free of her own dark, twisted world. Which it was—but Jagerfeld failed to capitalize on the dark and moving parts and instead chose to focus on Maja’s own selfish desires. I had no connection the Maja at all, which made the novel difficult to read because Maja was what the novel was about! There was hardly any focus on any of the secondary characters, such as her father. Maja did not develop at all in this book, nor did she learn to understand others and their feelings any better. This book was written in first person, which usually adds depth into a novel, but this time it just oppressed the story and made it dull. Jagerfeld tried to make this book honest, gritty, and tear-jerking. Instead, it was flat, colorless, and unmoving. Maja relationship with Justin also made no sense to me. The romance seemed to be thrown in there hurriedly just to fill the pages. They just meet, and suddenly they can’t stop thinking about each other and are making out in the hallway. I felt that Maja just used Justin to get her mind off of everything else in her life—and all the ladies out there know that a relationship built on that usually ends up in flames.
“It was a quarter to one of Thursday the twelfth of April, one day before the so-called unlucky thirteenth and I had just sawn off the tip of my left thumb with an electric saw.”
I would recommend this book for ages twelve and up, or very mature readers, because of language, sexual situations, and some graphic storytelling when she actually does saw off her thumb. Ouch.
When Maja finds her mother missing, her whole world seems to fall apart. With hardly anyone to turn to, will she be able to track down her mother—or be left to pick the pieces up herself?
