Tag Archives: Mental Health Issues

Review: I Crawl Through It by A. S. King

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Magical Realism, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

I Crawl Through It by A. S. KingI Crawl Through It
by A. S. King
Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Four teens battle inner traumas from grief to anxiety to neglect. Stanzi’s parents compulsively visit sites of school shootings. China has eaten herself. Lansdale tells outlandish lies that make her hair grow. Gustav is busy assembling an invisible helicopter from a kit the bush man gave him. The bush man has all the answers. He knows the place Gustav and Stanzi can go, a place that has answers for them, too. Escape seems like the perfect solution, until it isn’t.

Honestly, I so didn’t get this book. I wanted to like it. I liked pieces of it. I think each character individually had a really fascinating story. I just didn’t really understand how they fit together and why they were all stories in the same book. Also, I kept expecting the odd stuff to be revealed as metaphors for something. I thought maybe this layer of fantasy would be pulled back to reveal a layer of reality that made sense beneath it – like Neal Shusterman’s Challenger Deep.

That doesn’t happen, though. The story remains sort of this weird urban Alice in Wonderland, where the lines between reality and I’m not even sure what – fantasy? Hallucination? – blur and loop back on themselves.

The narrative is strong and each character is profoundly unique, so there are some really powerful elements present. But I couldn’t get past feeling left hanging, waiting for things to click into place and make some kind of sense. I felt like I missed the boat somehow.

If you’re looking for an intense emotional read where nothing is predictable and the plot really takes you outside the box, I Crawl Through It will not disappoint. If you need a little more sense and reason in your fiction, it may not be the book for you. Try Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman or We Were Liars by E. Lockhart if you’re looking for something different about mental illness.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
A man lives in a bush near Stanzi’s house. He wears a trench coat but is naked underneath, and sometimes appears to expose himself. Stanzi kisses him, and there are hints that he may be having sex with some teen girls, but it’s never described. Patricia lives with Gary and he asks her for sex, but she makes excuses.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
This isn’t really violence, but Stanzi is obsessed with biology and dissecting things, especially frogs. She doesn’t harm anything living.

Drug Content
The man who lives in the bush sells lemonade with or without roofies. Stanzi believes this is a joke. It’s never specified.

Review: Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella

Blogger's Favorites, Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , ,

Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

Bullying leaves fourteen year-old Audrey paralyzed with an anxiety disorder. Now she hides behind sunglasses within the safe walls of her family’s home. When her therapist challenges her to create a video diary, Audrey begins filming interactions between family members. Her mother, believing Audrey’s brother has a gaming addiction, sets out to cure him, by force if necessary. Frank, Audrey’s brother, just wants to enter a gaming competition, and he’ll do whatever he has to do to get time online practicing for the big day. The competition prep introduces Audrey to Linus, her brother’s gaming buddy. Linus seems to like Audrey, despite her anxiety. His enthusiasm for her wellness seems to propel Audrey forward, but a spike in anxiety always seems just a breath away for Audrey. She wants to flip a switch and be normal again, but she must learn that therapy and life don’t work that way. Sometimes it’s the unexpected daily victories that deserve to be celebrated.

While at first this might seem like a dark topic for an author famous for her laugh-out-loud stories, Kinsella brings the zany fun in the interactions between Audrey’s family members and even in some of Audrey’s own experiences. I loved that this isn’t a story strictly about a girl’s battle with mental illness, but that it shows the way Audrey’s experiences have affected each person in her family. Audrey’s mother absolutely cracked me up. Her hypervigilance and worry were so easy to identify with and, taken to the extreme as they were, easy to laugh at.

It’s also not a story about how getting a boyfriend saved a poor broken girl. Audrey’s relationship with Linus certainly plays an important role in her recovery. He challenges her to do things that she’s frightened of doing, and then his enthusiasm becomes its own reward. Sometimes he misunderstands Audrey’s needs, and that causes some problems. Those difficulties made sense and added another element of realism to the story.

Fans of Kinsella’s other books will definitely enjoy the situational humor and wit of Finding Audrey. Readers looking for a lighthearted read will find that despite the heaviness of the topic, this is a fun, inspiring story.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used infrequently.

Sexual Content
Audrey and Linus spend time snuggling on the couch and kissing.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
Vague references to instances of bullying that were severe enough to cause Audrey to have a breakdown.

Drug Content
Audrey takes medication for anxiety. She decides to quit her meds on her own and must deal with consequences.

Poetry and Friendship: Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

Book Review and Content, Contemporary, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , , ,

Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone
Disney-Hyperion

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

She might look just like another one of the popular girls, but Samantha has a secret not even her best friends can know: she suffers from OCD. She needs weekly visits to a psychiatrist and prescription meds to keep her anxieties at bay.

As her friendships with the top girls becomes more and more toxic, Samantha desperately wants an outlet. Her search leads her to Caroline, a carefree, fashion-less girl whose frankness and kindness may be just the right rescue. She introduces Sam to Poet’s Corner, a place where students gather to share poems about anything from chicken nuggets to the loss of a parent.

Through the healing experience of writing and sharing her own work, Samantha discovers a whole different side of friendship and love. But just when she feels she’s finally making real progress in leaving her OCD behind, new symptoms emerge that could destroy the new connections she’s made. She has to face the devastating possibility that she could be getting worse, not better.

While I loved that her love interest had his own baggage and even had that past connection with her and her friends, I wasn’t totally sold on the relationship. (Moral soap boxes aside…) The scene in which they have sex was sweet in that it’s obvious he cares so much for her, but it felt like, “and here’s the obligatory scene in which the teen couple has sex because that’s what teen couples do.” It didn’t feel necessary. It kind of struck a nerve with me that really doesn’t have anything to do with the story itself.

I think my favorite thing about this book is Samantha’s journey trying to “fix” herself and her OCD. She wants so badly to leave her anxiety behind and be a carefree, “normal” girl. There’s no quick-fix for her in this story. Poetry doesn’t magically cure her. What it does do, though, is allow her opportunities to better understand herself and the world around her. It provides an opportunity for her to see her current friendships in a different light, and to see friendship itself in a different light. She has a chance to evaluate what kinds of relationships she’d like to have and what qualities make a real friend. Those are such powerful moments in the story. She’s also challenged by the openness and acceptance in the Poet’s Corner group. She’s been hiding her own struggles, and they become a barrier to having real friendships.

The poetry was a great addition to the story, too. Some were funny and clever while others were deeply moving. They added balance and depth to a lot of the more minor characters as well as allowing a larger window into Sam, too.

I felt like all those relationship issues were so relevant and well-described. It was impossible not to root for Sam and to want her to ditch the nasty girls and have those friends who valued her the way she deserved. I wish the boyfriend stuff had been handled differently, but I really enjoyed the other elements of the story.

Language Content
Extreme profanity used with moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Sam briefly relates that she’s still a virgin. Her friends have had experience with boys, but no real details are given. She engages in a long, steamy kissing session in a swimming pool alone with a boy. Later, she has sex with her boyfriend. It’s a fairly long scene that focuses more on the togetherness and kissing than the actual sex. Though it’s not described in a graphic way, we know what’s going on, so it’s pretty intense.

Spiritual Content
None.

Violence
None.

Drug Content
References to teen drinking. Samantha takes medication for anxiety and OCD. She stops taking her sleep aid and has to have words with her therapist about it. I like that her meds or the fact that she’s taking them isn’t really villainized here. It’s not like she discovers a passion for poetry and that somehow cures her, and she has to find balance and face that there’s no easy fix for her. It reads like reality to me.