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Kim Empty Inside The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager Beatrice Sparks Books

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Kim Empty Inside The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager Beatrice Sparks Books

I read this when I was younger and loved it.


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Kim Empty Inside The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager Beatrice Sparks Books Reviews

When I read Go Ask Alice as a teenager, I felt the girl's downward spiral was too extreme not to have been exaggerated. But I didn't make the Beatrice Sparks-as-actual-writer connection until I read Jay's Journal. There were plenty of similarities. I went ahead with "Kim" because eating disorders are of interest to me, and I figured perhaps Ms. Sparks would vary the old pattern a little. Forget it yet another essentially good, optimistic, fun-loving teen from a nice white middle-class Christian family. I do like (Ms. Sparks's) suggestion that faith in Jesus can help heal one's troubles, but it is just wrong to deceive about these books being written by real teens. It's an insult to any readers who know better. And the results of drug abuse, occult experimentation, and chronic binge-purge cycle are usually overexaggerated or atypical in these kids' stories. Far better real-life accounts exist!
I enjoy reading Beatrice Sparks books, whether they are true or not. In fact, I read Go Ask Alice and It Happened To Nancy twice because I thought the message that was being portrayed was accurate and something every teen and parent needs to know (and these books are what every teen and parent needs to read).

With that said, Kim Empty Inside wasn't what I am used to reading when I read Sparks books. It didn't stay true to her form and I didn't enjoy it half as much as I did the previous two. In my opinion it didn't delve much into why she was doing what she was doing. The reasons seemed a bit shallow and I wish Sparks would have dug deeper into the issues. The other two books I mentioned made the stories believable. You could see why the main characters did what they were doing and the stories were very realistic. This one, however, wasn't so I was a bit disappointed.

Another thing that really bugged me (because I am OCD) is the fact that Sparks dates and times didn't add up. Things like that mess the flow of the story up for me.....especially when it happened frequently throughout the story.
Offensively Fake and Painfully Stupid
I enjoyed "Annie's Baby" by Beatrice Sparks when I first read it, even though I realized that there was no way a teenager could have written it. However, reading "Kim Empty Inside" was a struggle from the first page and only highlighted how bad Sparks' other books are.
For starters, there is no possible way this is the diary of a teenager. No teenager thinks like Kim (Sample dialogue "Do guys have it easier? Maybe I'm just a stupid little kid who wants to be a princess!" "I could hear [the cow's] soft ploppy cow pies," "We fell into each other's arms like little lost kittens" (a sentence I'm pretty sure has appeared in every other Sparks diary). The forgery wouldn't bother me too much if, by claiming this is a work of nonfiction, Sparks wasn't already manipulating people who could benefit from the message the book is trying to send. However, I just don't understand what that message is.
Kim's disorder is textbook from the start. She's a gymnast and clearly has issues with body image and food. She fast-binge-purges several times throughout the book, including once eating out of a dog bowl filled with scraps. Her move to college, where she does not get along with her roommate, doesn't help matters. After she passes out in a class, she is forcibly taken to a psychiatric ward (where she is apparently allowed to keep her diary, thank goodness), but refuses to accept she has a problem. A few weeks later she returns to the psychiatric ward, where she learns she only weighs 79 pounds. Her mother comes down to see her in the ward, but does not stay to help her daughter. What kind of mother would leave her daughter as soon as her daughter was released from a psychiatric ward weighing so little she technically could not have been alive? Besides a perceptive and evidently very powerful school nurse, nobody in the book does anything to help Kim- not her coaches, not her parents, and not her boyfriend. Even though the book is ostensibly about Kim's disorder, it often takes a backseat to other issues. If Kim hadn't decided to go to therapy, where (spoiler alert) she is miraculously healed, everyone would have ignored her right into her grave. What I took from the book is that eating disorders are not a big deal, it is up to you to get help with no assistance from loved ones, and college nurses can lock you in a mental ward if they suspect you may have an eating disorder.
My main problem with the book, however, was in Kim's relationship with Lawrence. Lawrence went from dating Kim's mean roommate Maria (who is mean because she once sexiled Kim, though if my roommate offered me her car to go visit my boyfriend who was also her ex-boyfriend in the middle of the night, I would probably to submit her name from Roommate of the Year) to dating Kim, who he quickly falls in love with. By quickly, I mean first date. I definitely don't know what Lawrence sees in the grotesquely immature Kim, but I also don't know what Kim sees in Lawrence. Apparently he's smart, since he's working on some sort of crazy science project with his professor, but man, does this kid have mommy issues! Every time he and Kim are together, Lawrence cries about SOMETHING. He cries because he loves Kim. He cries because he loves Kim's mom. He cries because his father is an atheist. He cries because he has to leave Kim. He cries because Kim reminds him of his mother (WARNING SIGN!). He cries because he has never had a real Christmas. He cries because Kim has an eating disorder. And every time Lawrence cries, Kim cries. I'm not surprised her eating disorder escalates when she's with Lawrence. He's exhausting at best and emotionally manipulative at worst. The terrible bit comes when Kim tells Lawrence she has an eating disorder (after her psychiatric ward adventure) and he says (with tears in his eyes!) that's he's known for months. Gee, Lawrence, you couldn't have said anything? Just going to see how this one plays out? "She'll either fix it herself or die. Nothing I can do." If your girlfriend only weighs 79 lbs, the time for diplomacy and quiet is pretty well past. These idiots deserve each other, but I was really hoping Lawrence would get hit by a car by the end.
To conclude The book is a quick read, but it's aggravating to anyone with common sense and misleading to children and teenagers. While it can be a fun read just by how outlandish it gets, it has no substance or message. It will leave you feeling just as empty inside as Kim.
The format was a little weird but it was a fast read and although it's not my favorite it's a good read if you're interesting in eating disorder stories.
great
I honestly think that this is a real diary, because the way 'Kim' write it almost impossible for someone who isn't a shallow bratty middle school acting girl to write. I do know other girls her age who should act and write older who don't, and they act like her. Kim is very shallow and so was her diary, she acted more like my baby sister who's 13, than a 18 year old. She is boy crazy, and obessived with herself. She's immature. I though her story would be more deep, and it's not it's about an annoying girl who's anorexic. I would find it hard to believe than an older lady like Beatrice Sparks, could even write someone so immature, and shallow, I do think it's real. I do feel bad for Kim, and no one should have to go though what she did, and I glad she had a good ending, but it's doesn't make a good book for older or more mature ladys. I'm 21 and it was too immature for me, I do think it would be a good middle school book, for young girls to learn from Kim's mistakes, but for those of us who are mature we would be annoyed by Kim.
Grade F

Kim is an immature seventeen-year-old, overly dependent on her parents and older twin sisters who develops and recovers from an eating disorder in record time. Her diary entries sound more like they were written by a middle schooler, though most of editor Beatrice Sparks "true" diaries have been debunked as untrue, though they are found in the fiction section labeled as true.
I only picked this out because I was looking for a cheap read. I don't recommend this book.
I read this when I was younger and loved it.