mental illness

Review: The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten

| Tasha

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The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B by Teresa Toten (InfoSoup)

Adam isn’t looking for romance at his OCD group therapy session but when Robyn walks in, everything changes. Adam has enough going on in his life with his divorced parents, a stepmother, and a little brother who needs Adam all the time. As Adam starts to teach Robyn about Catholicism, the others in his group become intrigued too. Soon Adam finds himself showing them all the church that he and his mother left years ago. Adam reassures himself that everyone lies, but his lies seem to be increasing each day, from lying to Robyn about where he lives to lying about his mother’s escalating condition. Adam wants to feel in control of his life and to get better, but it is all getting out of control, especially his OCD.

This teen novel won the Governor General’s Award in Canada. It speaks to the OCD condition and the difficult journey towards a healthier mental state. It also has a huge heart and a large dose of humor. Adam’s entire life could be seen as a tragedy but thanks to the writing here that keeps it from becoming morose, the book is triumphant and so is Adam. This is not a book that minimizes the impact of mental illness, instead it embraces the difficulties and concerns, showing how each and every day, each threshold and each twist of panic can change what is happening.

Adam and Robyn are beautiful foils for one another. Adam begins the book as the person with it mostly together while Robyn is freshly released from a residential program. But as the book and their relationship progresses, that changes in a realistic and heart-wrenching way. Throughout, readers see the depth of Adam’s issues and the strength it will take to stop lying to everyone, but mostly to himself.

Funny, deep and immensely satisfying, this novel deals with teens with OCD and how life just keeps on happening no matter how many lies you tell. Appropriate for ages 14-18.

Reviewed from copy received from Random House Children’s Books.

Review: The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

| Tasha

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

The town that Mikey lives in has been hit by more than its share of strange things. There were the vampires, soul-eating ghosts and the zombies. But Mikey isn’t one of the kids who would get caught up in those situations. He’s not an indie kid, just a normal kid who wants to graduate from high school in a few weeks, maybe kiss one of his closest friends, go to the prom, and just spend time together with the people he loves. But life isn’t that simple and strange things are happening around the town with blue lights glowing, angry cops with blue glowing eyes, dead deer that come back to life, and much more. Mikey is all ready to blame the new kid for everything, including his own inability to date Henna. And Mikey is having to deal with his own OCD returning, unable to stop washing his hands until they are bleeding. Then there’s the problem of his dad’s drinking and his mother’s inattention as she runs her new political campaign. Even Mikey’s older sister is struggling again with her eating disorder. As graduation nears and the town gets even more unstable, Mikey must learn more about himself and his friends before he can realize just how amazing life really is.

Ness adroitly combines several genres in this novel for teens. There are the real-life teen elements of parental dysfunction and mental illness. Those are cleverly combined with a fantasy novel that has children of cat gods, magical elves, and bodies that are used as vessels. And finally, there is the perfect ironic twist of being a parody of popular teen novels like Twilight. Ness does this final piece by having the events of a Twilight-like novel happening around the characters but rarely to them, the story of those events is told in quick manner at the beginning of each chapter and then left aside as Mikey and his story takes center stage with its brilliant mix of magic and normal.

It is that delightful genre bending that makes this book so special. But it is also the fact that though Ness is poking fun at some of the more popular genre tropes, he is also writing a great book that will please fans of those books too. The parody is there yes, but underneath that is a novel that has truly human characters who love one another, struggle with their own failings, yearn for more in life, and work hard to make sure that those they love are protected and cared for. It’s a novel with a true heart, one that is not ironic in any way, but gorgeous and honest.

A fascinating read, this teen novel will have you laughing at the parody while all the time enjoying the real depth of its characters. Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from HarperTeen.

Review: Fell of Dark by Patrick Downes

| Tasha

Fell of Dark by Patrick Downes

Fell of Dark by Patrick Downes (InfoSoup)

This novel for teens is told in two voices, Erik and Thorn. Both boys are mentally ill and struggling with what they see and hear. Erik believes that he is a saint, able to do miracles like having a picked flower that never dies and the sign of a cross formed by his wet body that never evaporates. Erik is silent on the outside but constantly thinking on the inside. His hands bleed with stigmata and he sees things that no one else can. Erik searches for a girl he knows is his destiny. Thorn is haunted by the voices in his head, ones that push him to do things that he would never do otherwise. If he doesn’t submit to the voices, he gets horrible headaches that he barely withstands. As the voices grow more powerful and insistent, Thorn finds that he needs them more and more to make sense of his life. But what he sees as the solution may just be final step in his insanity when his path crosses Erik’s.

Downes has written a beautiful and dark mess of a book where madness lurks everywhere and nothing is quite what it seems, or is it? Woven into it are moments of coherence, times of loving families that turn brutal and cruel eventually. There are moments of love, barely seen through mental illness and still glowing and true. And then there is the insanity itself that winds around, crouches low and threatens everything. It’s impossible to tease apart what is reality and what is delusion until another perspective enters their world and tilts it on its axis.

The voices of the two boys dance together and blur, at times they are indistinguishable from one another and other times they are so distinct that they pierce with individuality. This too is masterfully done, the perspectives are unique and troubling. The two boys are writhing with their inner pain, but in two very different ways. The language is superlative, filled with darkness and horror and also a deep beauty that can’t be mistaken. There are images that dance in that darkness, ones that open it up and let in light and others that close it in so tight you can’t breathe.

Riveting reading, this book is not for everyone. Teens who enjoy a journey into a different haunting perspective will find themselves captured by the writing and the characters in this novel. Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Philomel.

Review: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

| Tasha

challenger deep

Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (InfoSoup)

The Captain is always watching, constantly there, even before the ship. Caden knows the Captain well and knows enough to both respect and fear him. As he spends more time on the ship, he also gets close to the parrot who is working to plot against the Captain and bring Caden onto his side. But at times the ship fades away and reality comes back to Caden. He realizes that he’s pushing friends away and becoming more and more alone in his life. He’s always been popular and had plenty of friends but his new oddness and the strange way his mind is working keeps them at a distance. As the ship approaches the deepest part of the ocean, others join the crew, teens who have their own roles on the ship, those who navigate and those who look into the future. As Caden begins to get the treatment he needs for the voices in his head, these are revealed as the other patients around him. Caden has to journey across the dark sea alone, figure out who is on his side, and hopefully come out the other side alive. It’s a journey through a mind that is fighting an internal chemical battle against itself but it is also a journey of brilliance and beauty.

Shusterman writes from experience about the impact a mentally-ill teen can have on a family. His own son battles mental illness and the illustrations throughout the novel are ones that his son did as he got treatment. The book is raw and stunning in its depiction of the vivid world that schizophrenia can create, the voices making sense in this alternate reality of captains, parrots, ships and crewmen. There are moments of breathtaking clarity, where the deception is swept clear and the reader sees what had been clouded before. It is in these moments that the power of mental illness is striking and blazing bright. And then the clouds descend again and the fiction takes over the brain.

Shusterman writes a brave story here, one that doesn’t try to explain the fictions of the mind, but instead allows readers to ride the waves of paranoia and delusion along with Caden. Caden himself is a character that is so caught up in the throes of mental illness that one realizes that the battle all along has been for himself and his own survival. Shusterman plays with perspective, changing the narration from first person to second person and back again. It’s disarming and wild, something that readers may not notice at first, except as a strange jarring that slowly builds. It’s a very smart use of perspective, creating its own jittery feel for the reader.

A journey through mental illness, this book for teens speaks to the hope that treatment brings but also the hard work that it takes to leave the world of the mind behind and enter reality again. Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss and HarperCollins.

Review: Mosquitoland by David Arnold

| Tasha

mosquitoland

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

Mim now lives in Mississippi with her father and his new wife. Her mother has been left behind in Ohio. When Mim finds out that her mother is sick and perhaps dying, she sets off to find her. Mim steals cash from her father and stepmother and buys herself a Greyhound bus ticket to Cleveland. She heads north, determined to reconnect with her real home and her real mother, remembering the days they spent together filled with energy and love. But things happen along the way that keep on slowing Mim’s epic trip down. There is a perverted man on the bus, a kind older woman who smells of cookies and has a mysterious box, and a boy with green eyes and plenty of sarcasm. There is also a bus crash, moments of heroism, another boy who melts Mim’s heart in a different way, and the discovery of a new kind of family and a new kind of home. This bus ride turns out to be completely and wonderfully epic, but for very different reasons indeed.

Arnold dances down the dotted yellow line of humor and tragedy with grace. He melds the immensely sad and harrowing together with the hilarious and strange into a mix that is beautiful and real. He bravely mocks the sort of romance story that this could have been, allowing Mim herself to see the movie that she could have been starring in, before reality comes back and takes over again. Yet along the way, Arnold is also creating a movie and a book that are so much more romantic and beautiful than those false films of the mind.

Mim is a magnificent protagonist. Struggling with mental illness, Mim starts out obediently taking her medication but discovers along the way that her demons may not be the ones she was diagnosed with thanks to her father’s interference. Mim finds her own way to sanity in her journey, connecting with people who speak to her deeply, allowing herself to feel deeply, and rejecting ways that seem false to her. This is a teen who is strong, passionate about life, and luminous on the page. Her voice is her own, a glorious mix of sarcasm, well-read references and humor.

A road trip across the United States that is wildly funny, deeply introspective and completely extraordinary. Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from ARC received from Viking.

Review: Nest by Esther Ehrlich

| Tasha

nest

Nest by Esther Ehrlich

11-year-old Chirp has grown up in the 1970s exploring the coasts and woods of Cape Cod and particularly watching the birds and learning all she can about them.  Her home life has been stable and warm, but now things are shifting.  Her dancer mother is no longer able to dance because of the pain in her leg.  She’s also having balance problems.  The family tries to continue as normal but when her mother is diagnosed with MS, it throws her mother’s mental state into chaos.  Unable to deal with the diagnosis, her mother falls into a deep depression.  Through it all, Chirp is slowly making friends with the boy who lives in her neighborhood, someone she had always feared in the past.  As their friendship grows, her family falls further and further into distress while Chirp fights to keep her own personal equilibrium.  Unable to cope any longer, Chirp and her new friend form a desperate plan.

Ehrlich captures a family both on the brink of crisis and then moving fully into complete dysfunction.  Through it all, the characters react as humans rather than stereotypes.  Readers will be caught up in the turbulence of these lives, the hope as things seem to improve, and the devastation as they continue to fail.  Ehrlich guides the story with a steady hand, allowing the characters to come to life on the page and react as honestly as they can.  She also makes sure that this is shown through Chirp’s point of view, something that both protects young readers but also allows the sudden changes to be even more powerful.

Chirp and her humor and unique point of view keep this book from sliding too far into tragedy.  She is inventive, creative and has her own passions for birds and nature that crop up throughout the book.  Joey, her new friend, has a complicated family life and also a spirit all his own.  He is a male character we rarely see in books, a boy who turns away from becoming a bully to become a friend, all on his own without adult intervention.  Her family is complexly drawn too, from the older sister who wants to escape to a different family to her father who is desperate to keep his family together and continues to be loving in the most difficult of times.

Written with a strong new voice, this debut novel is filled with rich characters who come together just to survive.  Appropriate for ages 9-12.

Reviewed from copy received from Random House Children’s Books.

Review: The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

| Tasha

half life of molly pierce

The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

Molly has memory problems, she will awaken driving her car on the highway miles from home.  She will find herself on the couch watching a show on TV with her little sister when she had just moments earlier been at school.  She wakes up with her homework half finished and she doesn’t remember even starting it.  So when an unknown boy crashes his motorcycle in front of her and then calls her by name, Molly knows that there is more to her blackouts than she might have thought and that it is time to come clean about them with her parents and therapist.  As she starts to sort out what happens to her when she isn’t there, Molly meets Sayer, the brother of the boy who crashed and someone who seems to know more about Molly than she does.  Molly has to figure out not only what is happening to her but how she is connected to Sayer and his brother.

In this debut novel, Leno skillfully crafts a book of psychological suspense and mystery.  Cleverly, it all takes place in a single person who can’t remember it at all.  The result is a riveting read, one that is emotional and raw.  Molly is a great example of the unreliable narrator, one who knows that she doesn’t have the facts but also one who is incapable of putting it all together.  Readers may guess what is happening in the novel before Molly realizes it herself, but the book won’t let you go until it is revealed in its entirety.

Leno’s writing is noteworthy too.  She beautifully captures falling in love through physical, tangible reactions and poetic language.  She also gracefully shows the physical reactions of Molly as she struggles to live a normal life, such as this passage from the beginning of Chapter 8:

The next day at school I move through the hallways like they’re flooded.  Like I’m swimming through them, coming up every so often for air and clawing my way through seaweed that would hold me down, choke me, suffocate me.  My lungs burn with the effort of breathing.  What I wouldn’t do for gills.

This startling puzzle of a psychological thriller will have readers riveted from the very beginning.  Appropriate for ages 14-17.

Reviewed from digital galley received from Edelweiss and HarperTeen.

Review: Holding on to Zoe by George Ella Lyon

| Tasha

holding on to zoe

Holding on to Zoe by George Ella Lyon

16-year-old Jules left home and started working at a Toyota factory once her baby Zoe was born.  The facility offered free baby care and a small apartment for them to live in together.  But her best friend and mother don’t seem to be accepting Zoe at all.  It’s almost as if they’d be happy to Jules just forgot about her baby altogether.  But Jules is determined to be a good mother to this perfect little baby.  It means that she has to juggle a lot of responsibilities and even more when she heads back to high school.  When she is forced to leave Toyota and return to living with her mother, things reach a crisis.  Throughout the book readers will piece together what is true in Jules’ life and what is not.  This is a credible and disturbing book about teen pregnancy and mental illness.

In reading others’ reviews of this book, I found that many had responded negatively to the book.  It is a unique mixture of teen pregnancy book in the beginning and mental illness in the end.  The mental illness portion comes slowly and readers will see tentacles of it early in the book if they look for them.  Jules’ pregnancy is handled honestly with both the baby’s father and Jules’ mother responding negatively to the news.  There is a beautiful sensitivity to the entire work that makes it poignant.

Jules is a protagonist with real issues.  As she struggles, the characters around her become all the more human.  Her mother moves from being a rather shadowy figure of doubt to someone who cares deeply and is unable to show her emotions.  Jules’ best friend Reba also shows her true colors as Jules struggles on.  Reba refuses to play along with Jules insisting that she see the truth. 

This book is sensitive, real and tragic.  It is an issue book that changes issues as the story continues, something that is unique and fascinating.  Appropriate for ages 16-18.

Reviewed from copy received from Farrar Straus Giroux.

Book Review: The Babysitter Murders by Janet Ruth Young

| Tasha

babysitter murders

The Babysitter Murders by Janet Ruth Young

Dani seems to have a normal life on the outside, but she starts to have violent and invasive thoughts that she can’t control.  She has visions of doing inappropriate things or saying rude things about people she loves.  When she starts to think about murdering the little boy, Alex, she babysits for, she knows she has a problem.  When the thoughts start, she hides the large sharp knives in the garage and keeps checking on Alex to make sure she hasn’t hurt him.  Though she tries to tell her mother and her best friend, they don’t understand what she is trying to express.  Finally, in desperation, she decides to stop babysitting altogether, but while doing so admits to Alex’s mother what she has been thinking.  Soon the Dani is at the center of a media frenzy about a killer babysitter and is the target of an extremist group.  Everyone wants justice, but what is justice for something that never happened except in her mind?

This book builds slowly allowing readers time to understand Dani’s situation and relationships.  The book really picks up in the middle and ending, with even the length of the chapters shortening.  It reads at a very fast pace towards the end, making for a satisfying and riveting read. 

Dani is a very successful character.  A girl who is so sweet and kind, so afraid of disappointing others.  She is also an athlete, a musician, and on the way to having a boyfriend.  It is this normalcy that makes her mental illness work so well in the book.  This is not a girl who is a loner, but one with a healthy family life and social life.  Young has excelled at creating a girl who is normal but abnormal at the same time.

Young also works to emphasize the point that mental illness is not accepted by our society, though it should be.  The book is also about the speed of media frenzy, the overreaction of a community, and the targeting of a teen who has done nothing wrong.   It is about the fear of mental illness and the media’s disdain for it and yet their thirst for a big juicy story.

An outstanding look at mental illness in a teen, this book asks big questions many of which remain only to be answered by the reader.  Appropriate for ages 14-16.

Reviewed from copy received from Atheneum Books for Young Readers.

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