{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.0263671875, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 4.449468085106383, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Loki's Wolves by K. L. Armstrong and M. A. Marr (review)

It starts innocently enough, with the nameless narrator’s cross-country coach asking the girls to keep a food diary (with accompanying feelings) to make sure they are getting enough to eat and drink in order to sustain their training regimen. Then her friend Jill reveals that she is keeping a food diary of her own with a different goal: to lose enough weight so that she would be guaranteed the part of Clara in the Nutcracker. Slowly, subtly, Jill and Jill’s mother feed the narrator the lies of anorexia—that thin is synonymous with attractive, that people encouraging you to eat are just jealous that your self-discipline exceeds their own, that being thin is the only way to ensure that you will be loved. Soon enough, the disease takes on a life of its own, even when her new boyfriend, Jill’s brother, begs her to eat, even when her parents put her in treatment, even when the things her doctor and therapist say start to make sense. In the end, after treatment, she and Jill renew their efforts, and while Jill survives, she does not, and the diary ends with an emergency transcript and a hospital report of her death. This title, part of a new diary series, echoes Go Ask Alice in presentation and appeal, but it’s a sounder exploration of its focus problem. The diary reveals its writer to be an ordinary girl who takes a wrong turn in trying to understand her father’s rejection of her mother; looking for something to blame, she believes her mother’s weight to be the reason her father left and determines that being good enough to sustain a relationship means being thin enough. Her calorie intake and scale number give her something to focus on as a mechanism of control; thus, the pathology of her disease is both evident and credible. What is left unexplained and somewhat troubling is how Jill survives, given that her commitment was the stronger of the two, suggesting to the vulnerable that only some girls are at risk while others can live well at that knife’s edge. KC