Trigger Warning! Before I start in with my thoughts about this book, I think that it’s important to point out that there are some trigger warnings. If suicide, self harm, or severe depression are triggers for you, you might want … Continue reading
Trigger Warning! Before I start off on my review of this book, I want to point out that it deals with things such as depression, cutting/self-harm, and suicide attempts. If that’s something that may be a trigger for you, please … Continue reading
Maybe in Paris was the kind of book that had a really strong premise, and I expected a lot from it. As a book that features a character on the Autism spectrum, I really hoped for the best here, because … Continue reading
Don’t worry; be happy.
Keep calm and carry on.
Maeve has heard it all before. She’s been struggling with severe anxiety for a long time, and as much as she wishes it was something she could just talk herself out of, it’s not. She constantly imagines the worst, composes obituaries in her head, and is always ready for things to fall apart. To add to her troubles, her mom—the only one who really gets what Maeve goes through—is leaving for six months, so Maeve will be sent to live with her dad in Vancouver.
Vancouver brings a slew of new worries, but Maeve finds brief moments of calm (as well as even more worries) with Salix, a local girl who doesn’t seem to worry about anything. Between her dad’s wavering sobriety, her very pregnant stepmom insisting on a home birth, and her bumbling courtship with Salix, this summer brings more catastrophes than even Maeve could have foreseen. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?
As someone who has suffered from severe anxiety and panic disorders since I was young, I was really excited to pick up this book, because it features a main character who pretty much worries about everything all the time, and … Continue reading
Sixteen-year-old Pea looks normal, but she has a secret: she has Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). It is like having a monster inside of her, one that not only dictates what she can eat, but also causes anxiety, depression, and thoughts that she doesn’t want to have. When she falls crazy-mad in love with Ben, she hides her disorder from him, pretending that she’s fine. At first, everything really does feel like it’s getting better with him around, so she stops taking her anxiety and depression medication. And that's when the monster really takes over her life. Just as everything seems lost and hopeless, Pea finds in her family, and in Ben, the support and strength she needs to learn that her eating disorder doesn’t have to control her.
The first thing I noticed about this book when I started reading was the fact that it is written in second person narrative – something that isn’t often attempted, and when it is, can be really difficult to successfully do … Continue reading
For sixteen-year-old Mel Hannigan, bipolar disorder makes life unpredictable. Her latest struggle is balancing her growing feelings in a new relationship with her instinct to keep everyone at arm's length. And when a former friend confronts Mel with the truth about the way their relationship ended, deeply buried secrets threaten to come out and upend her shaky equilibrium.
As the walls of Mel's compartmentalized world crumble, she fears the worst--that her friends will abandon her if they learn the truth about what she's been hiding. Can Mel bring herself to risk everything to find out?
In A Tragic Kind of Wonderful, Eric Lindstrom, author of the critically acclaimed Not If I See You First, examines the fear that keeps us from exposing our true selves, and the courage it takes to be loved for who we really are.
In A Tragic Kind of Wonderful, we get a look into a sixteen year old girl’s life as she deals with bipolar disorder. It’s an eye-opening experience for those who might not know much about it, and for those who … Continue reading
