I recently read the book "Sold," by Patricia McCormick. Throughout the story, the main character Lakshmi gains and loses trust in people and situations very easily. She will begin to trust someone very quickly after she meets them, but will also stop trusting them seemingly out of nowhere.

In the book, Lakshmi places all of her trust in "Uncle Husband" almost immediately. She barely knows him, but automatically assumes that he will keep her safe and is scared when she has to be separated from him. While she is staying in the "Happiness House," she repeatedly says that she missed him and is scared without him, even though he wasn't nice to her at all and she barely knew him. She even refers to him as "A man who gives out sweets and slaps with the same hand." She probably trusted him so easily because she knew that if she didn't, she wouldn't have anyone left to trust.

In the book, Lakshmi didn't trust "the boy with the tea" for a very long time. Every day, he would come to the "Happiness House," selling tea to all of the girls. Lakshmi refused to buy tea each day, since she was saving her money so she could go home, but the boy always gave her a cup of tea anyway. He never asks for anything in return, and its not until he gets fired from his job for giving away free tea and he stops coming the the "Happiness House" that she realizes how good of a friend he was to her, and that she never even knew his name. She didn't talk to him for so long, and by the time she realized that they were friends, it was too late.

Throughout the story, Lakshmi trusts some people too easily, and others not enough. She trusts some people because she knows that without them, she'll have no way to feel safe. She doesn't trust other people because she knows that she has misplaced her trust in people before. A lot of the time, she trusts the wrong people and doesn't trust people she should've trusted.

In the book "The Pact," by Jodi Picoult, Chris's and Emily's parents aren't speaking to each other anymore, now that Chris has been charged with Emily's murder. The two families used to be extremely close, but Emily's parents refuse to believe that Emily was suicidal, so they think that Chris killed her.

Melanie, Emily's mom, used to be best friends with Gus, Chris's mom. After Emily's death, Melanie stopped speaking to Gus. She probably felt that it was Gus's fault that Melanie's daughter was dead, and didn't want to talk to Gus because of it. "Melanie pulled away and turned her back... Melanie did not respond... When Melanie swung around, she looked completely unfamiliar. 'What I know about Chris,' she said, 'us that he's still alive." In this part of the book, Melanie was telling Gus that it couldn't have been a suicide pact, because then Chris would be dead as well. Melanie thinks that Chris killed Emily.

When Michael, Emily's dad, started having lunch with Gus after they visited Chris in jail, Melanie couldn't understand why Michael would want to talk to Gus. She was still so mad at Gus, and didn't know why her husband wouldn't be, as well. "Melanie shook her head. 'You're a fool. Don't you understand the lengths a mother will go to to protect her child?' She glanced up, her nostrils flared, her lips white. 'That's what Gus is doing, Michael. Which is more than I can say for you.'" Melanie was saying that Gus was trying to convince Michael that Chris was innocent, so Michael would be a defendant for Chris.

Although the Gold's and the Harte's were once extremely close family friends, Emily's death (which was possibly caused by Chris) caused the families to almost entirely stop speaking to each other.

In the book "19 Minutes," by Jodi Picoult, the issues are often pushed away and not talked about. A lot of the characters don't know how to express their feelings, so instead of trying to talk about them, they try to push the feelings away.

In the book, Peter acted like everything was fine. He spent time with his family, he acted like he enjoyed school, and he seemed relatively happy. Later on in the book, we find out that Peter was depressed, suicidal, and shot and killed 10 students in his own school. No one knew he was planning this, no one knew he was depressed or suicidal. He pushed his feeling so far down that he had to resort to this. If someone had taken the time to ask him what was going on, or if he had decided to talk to anyone about how he was feeling, instead of keeping his issues to himself, the outcome of the story might've been different.

In the book, Alex, Josie's mother, tried for a long time to become closer to Josie after years of neglecting her. When she learns that Josie doesn't want to have anything to do with her since Alex neglected her for so long, Alex tries to pretend that she doesn't care. When Josie finally comes around and her and Alex become closer, Alex admits to missing having Josie always be there, and Josie tells her how neglected and forgotten she had felt for all those years. When they both started talking about the issues they had kept inside for so long, they were able to solve those issues and talk to each other more openly, instead of keeping everything to themselves as they had for so long.

In the book, many of the characters keep their feelings to themselves instead of openly talking about them. If Peter hadn't kept everything to himself and if Alex hadn't pretended not to care about Josie, the ending of this story might've been different. This book shows that a lot of the time, people don't know how to express their feelings, so they push them away instead of deciding to be open about what is going on beneath the surface.