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.