Author: lasophia

Charlotte Davis is a total wreck. She has already dropped more weight at the age of 17 than most individuals do in their lives. Yet she’s gotten good at forgetting. The anguish is washed away by the broken glass until only peace remains. You are not required to consider your father or the river. Your closest friend has passed away. Or your mother, who is powerless to help.

Charlie’s heart gets a little bit harder with each fresh scar, yet it still hurts so much. It hurts so much that you stop caring, which is sometimes necessary before you can pull yourself back from the edge.

A truly touching depiction of a girl struggling to put herself back together in a world that owes her nothing and has taken so much from her. The debut book by Kathleen Glasgow is brutally honest and heartbreakingly real. You won’t be able to take your eyes off this tale.
I knew I had to read Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl in Pieces as soon as I read the summary. I enjoy reading novels about mental illness a lot. I adore how unpolished they can be. Fortunately, Girl in Pieces did not let me down.

Girl in Pieces has a very raw plot, but it is masterfully written. Because she is a cutter and cut very badly the last time, the novel opens with Charlie at Creeley, a mental hospital. She is initially a selective mute but soon resumes speaking. We find out that Charlie has had a really difficult existence. She has experienced homelessness, been assaulted, pretty much lost her best friend, and she has a terrible home life. Charlie is thrown back into the real world far earlier than anticipated when the money for her stay at Creeley runs out. She is left on her own to manage. To be with her friend and crush, she relocates to Arizona, but things don’t go as planned. To avoid losing herself again, Charlie must learn to live and recover on her own. Girl in Pieces made me feel like anything might happen to anyone at any time since it was so realistic and relatable.

Girl in Pieces’ characters all had a really raw and vulnerable feeling to them. These were flawlessly crafted and seemed to be written by people I know and have known. Experiencing Charlie’s journey from the highs to the lows was fascinating and enlightening. There were numerous occasions when I wished that I could be friends with Charlie so that I could encourage her and let her know when she was making a mistake. After the mistakes were made, I wanted to be there for her and reassure her that every day offers a fresh opportunity to start over. I adored Blue’s lighthearted demeanor. Riley had a fascinating personality and I wanted him to succeed in life. For Charlie’s sake as well as her own, I wanted him to improve. Linus was also a truly remarkable person. I also admired Julie’s authenticity. Each and every one of the characters in this book had a significant impact on Charlie’s life, and I adored how superbly each and every one of them was written.

Girl in Pieces has a pretty fast tempo to begin with, which I found to be enjoyable. As Charlie leaves the hospital, it does slow down a little, but it still moves along nicely. The book does occasionally become a little too slow, but it swiftly starts back up not too much later.

There are numerous triggers in Girl in Pieces because it is such a dark, gritty, and honest book. The entire book might serve as a trigger. Self-harm, self-mutilation, cutting, drug usage, drinking, suicide, death, violence, physical and emotional abuse, mental illness, dark thoughts, profanity, and sexual acts and references are some examples of the many triggers in this book.

Girl in Pieces is a fantastic book all around. Although it is incredibly gloomy, it is realistic and beautifully written, with great characters. If you prefer reading dark, gritty books and are at least 14 years old, I would absolutely suggest Kathleen Glasgow’s Girl in Pieces.

Three months have passed since Lily discovered her older sister Alice cutting herself during “The Night on the Bathroom Floor.” Since then, Lily has been frantically attempting to maintain order for her family and herself. But as Alice returns home from her treatment program, Lily finds it more difficult to deny the emotions she has been attempting to suppress. Here comes Micah, a freshmen at the school with a complicated past. He was in therapy with Alice, and he is committed to helping Lily understand both Alice’s and her own experience. She struggles with obsessions and thoughts that she is unable to block off. She discovers it’s the words she’s been swallowing that are frantically trying to break through when Lily and Micah start working on an art project for school that involves finding poetry in unexpected places.

The Words we Keep won the Schneider Family Book Award. This award is given to books that properly embody the image of disability and mental illness. I think that this was a perfect book to win this award because it truly does depict mental illness in a proper light. 

This book was heartbreaking and it eloquently illustrates how challenging it is to manage an anxiety while also coping with loved ones who have attempted suicide. Since Lily walked in on her sister Alice cutting herself, Lily’s world has changed, but she makes an effort to maintain a positive attitude at school. But as soon as Alice gets home from rehab, everything falls apart. During this time, she meets and develops feelings for Micah, a new boy who attended the same recovery facility as Alice did after attempting suicide. 

The reader can’t help but feel compassion for these incredibly wounded individuals and a deep want to see them recover and find some comfort in the gloom. 

This was a deeply moving book that I couldn’t put down and finished in two days since it was written from Alice’s point of view and featured her poems. If you want to read a very real yet ultimately inspiring story, I definitely recommend this book. I would like to put out a trigger warning due to mentions of depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and anxiety.

The book “I Fell in Love With Hope” by Lancali, which is a pen name that the author writes under, is about learning to hope once more in a world of doubt and despondency. It is a work of realistic fiction with elements of magical realism woven throughout. In some ways, the book itself is a representation of many different types of people, including non-binary, LGBT, and disabled people.

The five main characters are either frequently in and out of hospitals or have spent most of their life there. They all suffer from various chronic conditions that have an impact on their way of life, but by working together, they are able to find the strength to go through truly challenging times. Sam, Neo, Sony, Hikari, and Coeur are their names, and because of their distinct personalities, many readers can identify with various characters.

The plot of the book is largely unaffected by climactic events because it is heavily character-driven. As a result, the words must be arranged on the page in a way that draws the reader in. The lines themselves are brilliantly crafted, as evidenced by the statement, “Our words fold over each other, dance together as our hands mimic them, act them out, that comfortable, ruinous distance the only thing keeping her mine, ghostly, unreal” (Lancali 64). A line like this should have had more power, but almost every sentence is constructed in this manner, which inevitably lessens its force.

Additionally, one might anticipate that the characters would be simple to relate to given how character-driven the plot is. I misjudged that, as it turned out. The novel’s characters were all difficult for me to relate to, which made the story go by very slowly at times. The personalities of the characters are not fully developed, assuming they have any depth at all.

Next, for the most part, the novel does a good job of portraying its subjects. The quality of life of four of the main characters is impacted by disability, and Lancali writes about both the happy and terrible days. Nothing that shouldn’t be sugar-coated is attempted to be done by the author. Other relationships include those between two male characters and a female character as well as a non-binary character.

The non-binary component is the only thing missing from the novel’s representation. It wasn’t until the latter quarter of the novel that I realized the narrator was non-binary because it wasn’t really mentioned. Up until that time, they have never been discussed in the third person. I believe that aspect of the book might have been handled better because it is heavily promoted as being a representation of non-binary individuals.

I give “I Fell in Love With Hope” a total of 3 out of 5 stars. The storyline twist at the end of the book is pretty unexpected, and the work has a great concept, however, it could have been written with a different format to make it easier and more interesting to read. In my opinion, the language may have occasionally been less ornate and it tended to decrease the impact of the well-written statements. But I do think you should give this book a shot if you value representation in literature and like character-driven storytelling.

Mental health has been a topic talked about in the book community for quite a long time; but, is it being represented in a proper and educational way? The author of the article The fault in YA books: why mental health in YA fiction needs to be better, Usratt Fahmidah, wrote about how wrongfully many YA authors depict the struggles of mental health. She believes that books such as 13 Reasons Why show the recovery from self-harm and the mourning of someone lost due to suicide, as something linear. In reality, it is anything but. Recovery from something such as self-harm is a long and winding road with many ups and downs and many people relapse. Mourning someone is very similar in most cases. There is no timeline for recovery and acting like there is gives the reader a false sense of reality. Fahmidah believes this is just one of many reasons why the wrongful depiction of mental health is harmful.

I personally believe that mental health is wrongfully written throughout many YA books. I think that many authors write characters with certain issues in a way that makes them seem crazy or even scary. For example, the way schizophrenia is portrayed is extremely harmful to the people dealing with it and incorrect in most cases. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that causes a warped view of reality that can cause hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking. This causes the condition to be highly stigmatized and in YA literature it has been blown out of proportion significantly. Many authors depict schizophrenia in a way that makes the character seem dangerous or crazy. Depicting them as people who are driven to harm others and cause destruction. In reality, many people with schizophrenia live a semi-normal life with the help of medication or specialty care. The way that authors depict this illness simply raises the stigma surrounding the topic.

SHE GETS THE GIRL is a sweet YA contemporary lit romantic-comedy. Alex spends her days paying the bills, taking care of her alcoholic mother, and trying not to go back to her ex. She learned not to trust people easily during her upbringing. She is planning her trip to college in an attempt to better her life while her girlfriend is getting ready to go on tour. Now she has to work up the courage to be able to ask for a long-distance relationship but an argument gets in the way. Things were said and now Alex must show that she is serious about it their relationship and redeem herself.
Molly has been in love with Cora since their first day of freshman year- but Cora doesn’t seem to know that Molly even exists. Since they are attending the same college, Molly wants to make a change. She’s not just going to try to get the girl; she also wants to meet some new people. Alex, the girl that wants to help her, isnt really the person she wants to get to know better. However, Molly cannot deny that she has a knack for seducing women, so she grudgingly agrees to work with her. They each gain more insight into their personalities and desires as they spend time together, which may not be a part of their original plan.
This was a really beautiful and endearing romantic comedy, which I loved. I cherished the bonds they forged with a few of the other characters, especially Jim, Alex’s supervisor. Both Alex and Molly are incredibly intriguing characters who grow more completely throughout the narrative. While they all have issues with their mothers, they are all quite different in hindsight. Alex is trying to break away from her alcoholic mother and learn to be independent while still being a part of her life. Due to the generational pain Molly’s mother is experiencing, she rejects some aspects of her history, leaving her children torn between two worlds. Each will have to face their own demons as they interact with one another and attend college.
The romance developed gradually and was quite nice. Most of the book was used to develop the characters and their relationships with one another. Given this, it was simple to support them as they reunited and experienced happy endings. Family, race, alcohol misuse, friendship, and healthy sexual relationships are just a few of the profound and thought-provoking subjects that make this book so compelling to read.

Marieke Nijkamp is the author of the fictional, stand-alone book This is Where it Ends. The story is set during the first day of classes after winter break at Opportunity High School in Opportunity, Alabama. Following the principal of the school’s infamous “welcome back” speech, students are dismissed and told to report to class. It quickly becomes apparent that the auditorium’s doors are completely shut, locking everyone inside with no way of escape.

Finally, the auditorium door opens three minutes after the bells signal the start of third period. A boy with a gun approaches the administration and student crowd. Then, he begins firing.

Throughout the 54-minute shooting, the book follows four different students in a split POV style: Claire, a cross country champion and JROTC drill team captain, Autumn, a Juilliard hopeful with a tragic history, and twins Sylvia and Tomas, who are battling with their own relationship and uncertain futures.

The book, This is Where it Ends, explores the grim possibility of an active shooter entering your school, a terrifying reality that many students worldwide have had to deal with.

The book’s primary subject made it exceedingly divisive when it was initially published, and there are still some very strong discussions about it now. After reading reviews, discussion threads, and articles about the book, I have discovered that some of the primary debated issues are whether it is morally acceptable to write a fictional book about a school shooting when you’ve had no experience with the topic, whether Nijkamp overstepped the mark by injecting drama into delicate, actual events, how accurately she portrayed the fictional shooter, and the fear and anguish of the victims.

I’m not here to respond to these questions, and I don’t think I can do so in a way that won’t spark more debate. In order to answer these questions I think you need to read the book and draw out your own conclusions.

Whether or not one agrees with Nijkamp’s depiction of a school shooting, this book definitely generates discussion and attention to a significant issue in America. Nijkamp provides a note at the end of the novel from herself outlining the purpose of the book and a list of conversation points to think about.

This is Where it Ends, was a really challenging book for me. It was so emotional, tragic, dark, and filled with horrifying words and images. The subjects Nijkamp touches on in this book may be upsetting to some readers especially if you are sensitive to the topic of school shootings.