TW: suicide attempts, suicide, depression, anxiety, self-injury


Yes, yes, yes! This is a truly great YA mental health that deserves many stars for many many reasons.

I'm going to quickly preface this review by saying that I'm counting this as an ownvoices review as I have personal experience with depression, anxiety, self-injury, and the loss of a friend via suicide.

With that said, there is so much of this book that made me cheer from the inside because of just really excellent rep.

"I don't think any of us are normal. We've all got shit going on, but we're all trying to convince each other that we're normal. I think it's fucked. I think it would be so much better if we were all just more honest and said when things were bad, or that we weren't okay or we were sick or we were happy or whatever."

First off, depression/anxiety rep was really, really great. Gideon has a history of depression, anxiety, and self-injury, a god-awful cocktail that I know too well. This book touches on so many fine points often missed in mental health lit - keeping all of one's feelings and actions a secret, the inward struggle, feeling overwhelmingly guilty and awful and sad sometimes for no apparent reason, the feeling of 2 steps forward and 12 back. It was just all really well done.

At times I felt the anxiety rep was a little overdone, Gideon's journey with his anxiety felt a little unrealistic as far as how he developed, feeling mildly like he jumped from one extreme to the other by the end of the book. However, the representation of Gideon's thought processes was great.

And here is something I'm shouting about: few YA mental health books give fantastic representation of family and friends that are aware of someone's mental health like this book. The interaction, the checking-in, the sometimes over-protectiveness and how infuriating this can be for the mentally ill was fantastically accurate.

Another thing I'm cheering for? The therapy rep! Way too often therapists are only depicted as clinical and pill-pushing and yet this book had a fantastic mix of both. It touched on the shopping for a GOOD therapist that suits the client, it discussed more than one type of therapy, it rep'd positive medication use. I honestly thought the therapy rep was absolute stellar in this book and authors should follow this example.

Ava's grief for the death/suicide of her best friend was raw and messy and in many ways spot on. There is no sugar-coating the experience. Ava makes a lot of dumb mistakes, is overwhelmed with feelings, and struggles to find a way to move on. This is real and emotional to read and why I thought it was so great.

The interaction between the MCs as well was incredible! I went through so many emotions from laughing to crying to shock and horror. I love books with feelings and if you do too you need to pick this book up.

“I just smiled and said nothing, because that's what I do.”

In among all these wonderful, glorious components there were some points where I wanted more, leaving this book short of a five star review.

I wish the author explored more about Kelly's suicide attempts. It's mentioned that it was an ongoing issue, but very little was truly discussed. I understand this was to focus the story instead on Ava and her journey, however I feel expansion on this topic would have only brought more depth and complex to how Ava viewed Kelly's death.

Another thing I wish the author explored more was Gideon's self-injury. There is no direct discussion about this in a present-day sense. Gideon discusses what and why he did it. But that's about it.

Self-injury is very much addictive and I'm disappointed that this wasn't explored more - with all the stressful events Gideon deals with, I feel as though a more realistic and complete rep would have been explored the thoughts or emotions pulling Gideon back towards self-injury. I feel as though Christian missed an incredibly opportunity to bring this discussion to the forefront.

The final thing - something about the writing and the story left me wanting a little more. The plot line itself was fairly predictable with the author letting the reader to instead be thrown headfirst into an emotional roller coaster, rather than putting forth an original story line.

All in all though this is a fantastic mental health book that I recommend to anyone who has been previously disappointed by depression, anxiety, or grief rep in the past.



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