Another Place by Matthew Crow

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 304

Publisher: Atom
Released: 3rd of August 2017 

A small town. A missing schoolgirl. A terrible secret. And one girl's fight to survive.

Sixteen-year-old Claudette Flint is coming home from hospital after an escalating depression left her unable to cope. Released into the care of her dad, she faces the daunting task of piecing herself back together.

She may look unchanged; but everything's different. The same could be said about her seaside hometown: this close-knit community seems to be unspooling in the wake of the sudden disappearance of one of her schoolmates, Sarah.

As the police investigate and the press dig around for dirt, small town secrets start to surface - and Claudette must do everything in her power to keep her head above water. 

What I Have to Say 

Apart from a really, really accurate description of depression right at the very end of the book, this book didn't really have much of an impact on me. The story was enjoyable to read, but I didn't really have strong opinions on whether it was good or bad. It was just one of those in the middle books that was good enough to read but doesn't really go much further than that. 

I liked the main character, the depiction of her feelings felt accurate and very present throughout the book. She was easy to like, because it was obvious that she cared deeply about finding Sarah and her really bad depression periods were shown accurately but not in too much detail. Sometimes going into the nitty gritty detail of depression can be off-putting. In this book it more goes into the time lost when you're depressed. It's pictured like she just goes dark and stays in her room for days, which is exactly how it feels like when you emerge from deep depression like that. 

Really that's all I can say about this. It's obvious that a lot of thought went into this and it's got some really good descriptions of how it feels to be depressed, but as a story, I didn't find it particularly compelling. 

So if you want to understand depression, it's a great book, if you're looking for a story to get lost in you might want to pick up a different one. 

My thanks go to Atom and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review. 

A Tragic Kind of Wonderful by Eric Lindstrom

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 400

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books 

Released: 29th of December 2016 

How can you have a future if you can’t accept your past?

Mel Hannigan doesn’t have it easy. Mourning the death of her firework of a brother, trying to fit back into a school she’s been conspicuously absent from and struggling to deal with the loss of three friendships that used to mean everything. Struggling to deal with a condition that not even her closest friends know about.

So Mel tries to lock away her heart, to numb the highs and lows, to live quietly without hope – but also without pain. Until someone new shows her that it can be worth taking a risk, that opening up to life is what can make it glorious…

And that maybe, Mel can discover a tragic kind of wonderful of her very own.

What I Have to Say 

A book that you can sink into and just read without any distractions is always a good find. Lindstrom's characters both in Not If I See You First and A Tragic Kind of Wonderful are so easy to get to know and with both books I've found myself completely involved in their world in a way that some books completely fail to achieve. 

This is a book about acceptance. To gain any real kind of friendship or relationship, Mel has to let them into her life. She has to share her secrets and hope that they still like her after they find out. It's a struggle that I think many of us face in some way or another and so is easy to relate too. I also think the feeling of being watched all the time and having people hyper-attentive to your change in moods is another thing that a lot of people with mental illness can relate to. 

I am not familiar enough with Bipolar Disorder to say if Lindstrom has depicted it well, but the rest of the book, the characters, the fear of telling people and the feeling of having a mental illness in general was well captured. 

Eric Lindstrom is definitely an author I trust to get a good story from. 

My thanks go to Harper Collins and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review.