Tag: depression

Book review: Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Delacorte Press, 2015

Fourteen-year-old British teen Audrey is making slow but steady progress dealing with her anxiety disorder, which she developed after a car accident and tremendously difficult bullying. This mysterious altercation(s) with the mean girls at her school has sent her deep into an anxiety spiral so her life has changed dramatically since she has been battling depression and anxiety disorders. She is now always wearing dark sunglasses, unable to leave the house, doesn’t attend school, and has an attack if she talks to anyone besides her family. Audrey records what goes on in her house since she has a very hard time going outside and the drama of her family. Her brother Linus’ friend comes into the picture, and her recovery gains momentum.

This YA romance novel with excellent dialogue was a witty and sassy quick read. It showed us the recovery from mental illness as opposed to the descent into it that many others reveal. Her dysfunctional family provided some comic relief, even though the author kept the mental illness topic gentler and more lightweight than other books on the same subject.

It was a lighthearted, limited angst, ofttimes humorous story about teen life, anxiety, first love, and family love that discussed mental health therapy techniques, but I’d have loved to hear more of the backstory that caused her the issues the book talks about.

Book review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Alfred A. Knopf, 2015

Violet and Finch both attend the same high school, and their first encounter takes place atop the Bell Tower, where Violet attempts suicide after surviving a car accident that kills her sister. Finch, a troubled kid with an abusive father, arrives there with the same intention but he saves her. This heartfelt YA fiction is about Violet and Finch’s friendship, love and mental illness. She’s the popular kid and an online blogger; he is the high school weirdo.

Violet struggles with survivor’s guilt and her parents refuse to acknowledge her trauma. Finch is quirky, fun, tortured, misunderstood, poor, easy to pity child bursting with originality, vigor, and enthusiasm. 

Violet and Finch are forced together to work on a school project where they must explore Indiana. Finch, with his carefree, spontaneous attitude, takes the assignment to heart and they set out to find all of the bright places in Indiana. In doing so they explore their relationship.

The book, similar in tone to The Fault in Our Stars, explores falling in love and that same love but fading some months later. The two characters try to fix each other but Violet is filled with regret and Finch is obsessed with death which the novel continuously explores. Ultimately, I agree with one of the reviewer’s blurbs at the front of the book that said something to the effect of this book isn’t meant for those suffering with mental illness but instead their friends.

Book review: Essential Maps for the Lost by Deb Caletti

Publisher: Simon Pulse, 2016

How do you go about getting lost? Answer: “There are many ways to be lost.”

The protagonist in Essential Maps for the Lost wants to escape herself. Why? It’s summer, one last summer in Seattle, away from her mom, a realtor, who expects more from her daughter, Mads (Madison) Murray, that she can give. Mads future has been planned for her, it’s a real estate career with her mother unlike the college path that Mads so desires. In order to make her mom happy, Mads stays with her aunt, uncle, and cousin during the summer while taking real estate classes. Then after the brief real estate curriculum at the local college Mads will go home and sign the paperwork making her a partner with her mom.

Do you think you’re having a bad day? Well, Mads, out for a morning swim collides with a dead body. The shocking discovery is of another lost soul who did the imaginable on one traumatic morning. The body of the woman was the mom to Billy Youngwolf Floyd, a grieving young man struggling to bypass the shadow of grief that encapsulates him as he carries a map in his pocket. It’s from his favorite children’s book: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Mads is obsessed with the dead woman and sets about to stalk her son: Googling the deceased, finding out from where she came, her home, and her family. That is the junction where questions, coincidences, and secrets come into play. Billy, who moves in with his grandmother, is full of questions. He is lost and confused. Billy, who works for an animal shelter, focuses on the only things that makes him feel better: that map from the book.

Billy and Mads, as well as Billy’s grandma, are full of depth, with wonderful personalities, and tangled emotions, albeit the grandma is a bit cranky. Despite the tragedy these characters work really well together and even the minor characters feel real.

So, Billy runs into Mads, who is standing outside his old house. What’s weird is he keeps running into her at random times, like on a bridge, where Billy thinks Mads might be thinking about jumping. They both wonder if they were supposed to meet? Fall in love? Madison wakes up to the world around her and she starts to notice other coincidences, like witnessing Billy commit a crime.

Mads obsession with the dead body, Billy’s deceased mom continues. But she can’t tell Billy that she’s the one that found the body. This book is really about how life can be unfair and cruel, how what you say and how you treat people (and animals) can be the difference between life and death, and how the opinions and hopes of your family members can be hard to deal with and how you can find hope in unexpected places.

This YA novel had a lot of substance to it such as self-discovery and finding out what you really want out of life. With beautiful, lyrical, sometimes witty writing, and pacing on the slower side, you’ll find it a touching read where love needs no reasons. Essential Maps for the Lost is an emotionally significant exploration of grief, mental illness, and hope, as well as the redemptive power of storytelling.

Book review: Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

Delacorte Press, 2016

Girl in Pieces talks is a masterfully created emotional rollercoaster about self-harm, sexual assault, eating disorders, depression, suicide, alcohol and drug addiction so there is a trigger warning for anyone seeking to read this book. This novel doesn’t romanticize or glorify self-harm and mental health and reveals dark depictions of homelessness and abuse. Kathleen Glasgow masterfully shows the inner turmoil of someone battling mental health issues. The book has its readers walk along with the protagonist, Charlie Davis on her journey from waking up in a Minnesota psychiatric hospital to a sudden discharge back to the same life that drove her there. She should be dead by now.

As the title suggests, Charlie attempts to pick up the pieces of herself and make herself whole again throughout the book. Every time Charlie would go two steps forward, she’d fall two steps back and may not off the happy ending we always hope for in a read that tackles the less spoken issues in society such as suicide down to less triggering topics as our health care insurance system whose lack of healthcare puts Charlie back out from where she came.

As Charlie grapples with toxic relationships, an unfixed past, and an unsteady future, she must make a decision to fix herself or stay shattered. Girl in Pieces is raw, blunt, and acknowledged a lot of the struggles that are normally not written about like the recovery aspect of mental illness and the ups and downs of healing.

Book review: Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

Greenwillow Books, 2017

Eighteen-year-old Eliza Mirk straddles two worlds: in real life, she’s a shy and friendless high school student, but online, she is known as LadyConstellation, anonymous creator of the highly popular webcomic: Monstrous Sea. Eliza finds so much joy online that there’s hardly any joy left for her life offline. She lost herself in the world and characters she created, and it was so much easier for her to remain cocooned in her imaginary world than challenge herself to make real-life connections. But when Wallace Warland transfers to Eliza’s school, he reveals himself to be Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, rainmaker. Though Wallace and Eliza grow close and bond over their love for Monstrous Sea, Eliza struggles with revealing her own identity as the creator of the webcomic.

Wallace even begins to draw Eliza out of her shell. After a series of strange events threaten to expose everything, she’s worked to keep hidden, Eliza finds that her world has begun to crumble around her. She deals with anxiety, depression, and overwhelming pressure as she tries to learn how to reconcile the two halves of her life that seem so far apart. She lives in her comics and her dedication to her creation and her fandom borders on an unhealthy obsession as she treads the boundaries between her online presence and reality.

Shyness, escapism, obsession, and low self-worth were all very relatable in this story. It’s a great look at the messiness of love when depression and low self-esteem get in the way of communication. This heartbreaking, quick read is also worth reading for parents that are wondering, no, struggling to understand why your teen is a part of a fandom. The book has little drawings and stories from her webcomic throughout, making it more interactive and engaging. It’s delving into PTSD, anxiety, and depression is a trigger warning for this near tearjerker about teen angst and romance.

Book review: The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos

Balzer + Bray, 2016

Seventeen-year-old Imogene Scott sets out around New England scouring for clues to find her mystery writer father with depression and bipolar disorder who recently disappeared on Valentine’s Day, and the mother (troubled waters) that abandoned her when she was just two years old. She does so using clues and tips from her father’s detective books as well as other mystery writers, scouring hospital records, and neighbor interviews. All Imogene knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child.

The Noir like tone of this YA novel matches the backdrop of cold, harsh, New England winters. This engaging, suspenseful mystery bears testament to loyalty, perseverance, and love despite learning that the stories about her parents are fictional just like Joshua Scott’s medical mysteries. While she has little in the way of clues, between her wits and the assistance of her best friend Jessa she starts out on a path that will impact her life forever.

The masterful weaving of mental illness, resiliency, precise plotting, unexpected twists, dynamic characters, and a sensitive treatment of mental illness makes this YA novel shine.

Book review: I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios

Henry Holt and Company, 2015

The protagonist, Skylar lives in a dusty California named Creek View where so far she’s beaten the odds of being a Creek View girl with a baby, in a mobile home, with no future. In a piddly three months Skylar can escape to fulfill her dreams. She has an art scholarship and is focused on moving. Just as she is about to leave, her mother loses her job and stays in bed all day, kicking off a chain of bad things.

Then she reconnects with Josh, a nineteen-year-old wounded warrior who escaped the only other way possible, joining the military. But Josh loses a leg in Afghanistan, and his jerklike attitude, and is also isolated in evolving ways that only Skylar may understand. They find each other at their seedy place of work, the Paradise Motel which becomes more of a home than his real home. Skylar also works at the motel, but spends her time dreaming about escaping the town.

These pained characters ultimately tell the hopeful tale of swimming against the tide in a tired town and of relationships that are complex and flawed. It’s a heartfelt, complicated, realistic look at love amidst poverty, PTSD, and depression.