Readers will find a refreshingly measured look at schizophrenia, but they won’t come away with medical facts.
It’s 2012, and a 16-year-old boy with schizophrenia starts fresh, with a new drug trial and at a new high school.
Adam’s old friends didn’t stand by him when they became aware of his schizophrenia, though he’s been experiencing symptoms since he was 12. Maybe the experimental (fictional) drug he’s taking will allow him to control his symptoms enough to make new friends who don’t know his history. Through journal entries he’s writing for his therapist, Adam details both his changing symptoms and his experiences as a new student at a Catholic school. At first school seems OK despite the provocations of a bully. Adam befriends “impossibly pale…blindingly white” Dwight and starts dating beautiful Filipina Maya. (Adam is Italian-American with no identified race so likely white.) Though the medication works at first, visual hallucinations still plague him. Adam nearly always recognizes his surprisingly coherent, sometimes-helpful hallucinations as not real, and his executive function is generally unimpaired; he can keep his illness hidden from his classmates. But the drug starts failing, and in the anti–mental-illness culture of fear immediately after the Sandy Hook school shooting, Adam’s in-school episodes go over poorly. Despite this turn, it’s a welcome novel that doesn’t treat schizophrenia as an unavoidable sentence of doom and that allots friendship and romance equal weight with mental illness.
Readers will find a refreshingly measured look at schizophrenia, but they won’t come away with medical facts. (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: July 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-55088-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A summer romance that’s a delightful read in any season.
Cass Adler has a rule: “Absolutely no dating summer girls. Ever.” Unfortunately for her, Birdie Gordon is irresistible.
Cass is a hardworking lifeguard on the beaches of Newport, Rhode Island. She loves her friends, family, and neighborhood—and hates the entitled summer tourists. Cass is headed to MIT in the fall, and she has to make as much money as she can to help pay her way. When wealthy George Gordon, who owns the many rental properties Cass’ father manages, offers to pay Cass to keep an eye on his wild, flighty daughter, Cass reluctantly agrees. But between the forced proximity and emotional memories of their childhood friendship, Cass finds herself caught in Birdie’s orbit. Birdie, on the other hand, has been nursing a secret crush on Cass for years. Both girls are white and bisexual; Birdie is a well-known social media influencer with a boyfriend. The narrative not only chronicles the teens’ slow-burn romance, but also deftly addresses the underlying issues present in their relationship, including wealth, class differences, the privilege of being able to come out on your own terms, and the volatile nature of social media. This fast-paced enemies-to-lovers romance will keep readers turning the pages, eager to see whether Cass realizes that not all summer girls are the same, and that some, in fact, might be worth everything.
A summer romance that’s a delightful read in any season. (Romance. 13-17)Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9780593696897
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
Tackles deep subjects but misses the mark.
A complicated story of family dysfunction blended with a frothy romance.
Seventeen-year-old Olivia Schwartz’s drive masks the intense anxiety she’s carried since finding her beloved older brother dead six years ago. Her parents never mention Logan; her 5-year-old twin brothers don’t even know he existed. But on a family cruise, carefree Jules—an old summer camp friend who happens to be there too—tempts Olivia to put aside the science fair research that could get her a prestigious internship with a surgeon, drink alcohol to ease her social awkwardness (consider it “a trial run” for college parties, Jules says), and go after sexy fellow passenger Sebastian. Olivia’s deep repression starts to ease as she tries a more relaxed teen life for the first time, but when she opens up about Logan, Sebastian and Jules keep saying things about him that bother her, leading to an explosive revelation that shakes up Olivia’s understanding of her family. Wooden characters serve only to reflect and refract Olivia’s story, and the thin plot contrivances are distracting. The thematic disconnect is troubling: This is both a book in which addiction is a leitmotif and also one in which problematic drinking is normalized, as Olivia repeatedly asks for Jules’ flask to ease her emotional distress. Olivia is Jewish, and most characters read White; Jules is cued East Asian, and there is some diversity in race and sexuality in the supporting cast.
Tackles deep subjects but misses the mark. (Fiction. 13-17)Pub Date: June 20, 2023
ISBN: 9780063230996
Page Count: 320
Publisher: HarperTeen
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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