Something Like Normal is a slim book that explores a few weeks in the life of Travis Stephenson, a 19-year-old Marine home on leave after a tour in Afghanistan. His best friend there was recently killed and Travis is having apparent PTSD symptoms even though it’s undiagnosed because he’s afraid to seek help. He has nightmares and keeps thinking he’s seeing his dead friend. This definitely makes for a good story. And I did enjoy it, even though there were some things that bugged me about it.

Travis’s father is a jerk who has never forgiven Travis for giving up football. Travis’s brother Ryan sort of stole his “girlfriend” (I’ll get to the reason for the quotes), Paige, after Travis left for basic training and co-opted his car as well. His mom turned into a super-supportive military mom and his father didn’t take well to being ignored, so their marriage is struggling. So Travis comes home to a bit of a mess.

He goes to a party with Ryan and ends up at a bar where he encounters Harper Gray, a girl who wronged back in middle school. Somehow a little fib he told took on a life of its own and Harper ended up with a reputation as the town slut.

This is where one of my issues comes in. The good girl/bad girl thing was definitely in this book. Because Harper, despite her reputation, was really a good girl (i.e. a virgin) and Paige was really the one who slept around a lot (that’s why Travis thought of her only loosely as his girlfriend). And there were some other girls who were also considered sluts by the guys in the book in a way that might be realistic but was still frustrating. I wanted to see Travis come to realize his role in the perception of the girls and he never did.

Anyway, Travis runs into Harper at a bar and she goes off on him when he tries to flirt with her and punches him. That seems to be all she needs to do to get her five years of anger and resentment out of her system, which is the other thing that bugged me. Suddenly, she seems interested in him. I didn’t understand why, and I think the story would have been better if Travis had to struggle more to win her over.

Having said that, when I ignored how easy it was to get Harper on his side, I did enjoy the rest of the story. Travis does seem to change a little, and he comes to terms with the impact his friend’s death has had on him. He is a better guy by the end. Harper could definitely have been developed more than she was, but she was still a good character. The other secondary characters were a tiny bit flat. The best was Travis’s mom, who makes a major decision with his support. His friends aren’t bad as characters, though they are a little stereotypical (but to be fair, I imagine groups of Marines probably frequently are like that).

Overall, it was a good book, with those caveats I mentioned above. It’s nice to read a male protagonist. And Doller is a good writer. She gets into Travis’s mind effectively, the dialogue is realistic, and the story is well-plotted.

King loves to work with weird ideas, and this book is no exception. At the beginning of the book, all we know about Sarah is that something happened at school that has her unwilling to go anymore. She was a talented artist but whatever happened seemed to suck her ability to draw right out of her fingers. She wanders Philadelphia by bus and ponders how literally nothing is original. Nothing she does, nothing anybody else does, nothing. She’s depressed and having an existential crisis.

But the thing is, the book isn’t just about Sarah. She narrates most of it first person, present tense. But there are also sections she narrates in the past tense about a family vacation to Mexico six years earlier, the last time she saw her nine-years-older brother. And then there are short scenes narrated by Sarah’s mom, which give us insight into the problem of Sarah’s family. Because that’s what the book is really about. It actually digs in pretty deep into the subject of physical abuse in a unique way.

But even more, the book’s about being a teenager. Sarah desperately wants to just be a human being, but she has to deal with the labels that society attaches to everyone. We learn a little slowly that her friends—or someone—did something to her. And King sums up what it’s like to be a teen with something to say:

But now it’s been so long that if I bring it up, I’ll look like a girl who can’t let go of things. Teenage girls always have to let go of things. If we bring up anything, people say we’re bitches who can’t just drop it.

That quote is just so perfect.

At this point, you may be wondering what’s so weird about the book. Sarah starts seeing other Sarahs. Actual, physical manifestations of herself at other stages in her life, specifically at ten (just after the Mexico trip), twenty-three, and forty. This isn’t some mental break—other people can see and interact with the extra Sarahs. This drives home the point that everyone is only at a particular point in their lives—they have a past where they were different but still themselves, and they’ll have a future where the same holds true. It’s interesting.

This is a loaded and layered book and you’ll probably see different things than I did. Whatever you might find, it’s worth your time if you enjoy magical realism or have liked King’s other books.

There has been a lot of books about mental illness coming out lately, which I think is great as long as the author handles it carefully. The Weight of Zero is definitely a standout in the crowd of these books for its authenticity and solid story.

Cath Puloski has bipolar disorder (type I, which involves possible psychosis during the mania periods). And she’s already gone through some destructive mania periods and significant long-term depression as well. She used to be a ballet dancer but has quit it. Her two best friends abandoned her a few months earlier and one in particular has now made it her life’s work to humiliate Cath at every possible moment. The same one told the entire school about her disorder and now everyone mocks her and calls her crazy.

When the book opens, Cath’s fairly stable. Not (very) depressed; not manic. But she’s obsessed with her disorder and how it’s ruined her life, as she sees it. She’s convinced that the depression will eventually return and she has a plan for that: she’ll kill herself before it can really take hold. Like most potential suicides, she’s convinced that her mom (her only family) will be better off with her dead because Cath feels like a massive burden. She feels generally worthless because she thinks she’s genetically deficient and that none of her peers could possibly care about her.

Her psychiatrist has recommended that she start a group therapy program that runs every day after school. She doesn’t want to go at all, as she’s sort of checked out of trying to get better because she thinks she can’t. But her mom makes her go. She meets some new characters there, including Kristal, who becomes her first post-diagnosis friend. The other change in her routine occurs when she gets paired up with Michael for a big history project. Both things take her life a direction she thought impossible.

The book deals with the reality of bipolar disorder exceptionally well. We’re in the psychiatrist’s office with Cath while her doctor explains aspects of the disorder but the story focuses on her reaction to that information, so the reader is picking up knowledge about it without it feeling clinical. I thought that was really well done.

Cath’s voice is great. She’s very believable even when she’s thinking things that the reader knows are totally wrong. And best of all, she’s funny—not constantly, but every so often. It’s just right. For instance, she reacts to the leader of the therapy group’s change in tactics:

This is a novel spin on the IOP experience—Sandy pitching our mental illness issues like they’re black badges of courage. The few, the brave, the bipolar.

The other characters were also well drawn. Cath’s mom is wonderful—you feel so bad for her because you know what Cath’s planning despite the fact that she’s trying so hard to do everything right. The plot is strong and there’s a great subplot with the history project (and the way it ties into Cath’s life and thoughts is perfect).

Overall, an excellent book that I genuinely loved. Everyone should read it.

I always like a good book that deals with mental health issues, as long as it does so realistically and non-preachily.* The Nature of Jade fits the bill.

Jade’s a very open character, revealing a lot about herself early on, and she’s frank as the book proceeds, too. She has Panic Disorder and struggles to keep herself under control a lot of the time. She has found that watching elephants calms her down, so she keeps the Seattle zoo’s 24-hour elephant webcam on, which is where she first sees a boy in a red jacket coming regularly to visit, a toddler in tow. She becomes mildly infatuated and even goes there hoping to meet him, but he doesn’t show up again. In the end, she volunteers with the elephants and becomes a bit of an elephant care expert.

Then the red-jacket-boy shows up again and she actually meets him and learns his name. They start seeing each other and she really likes him, but her instincts tell her that something is up, though she doesn’t know what. When she finds out, it’s a bit of a shock. Other readers might guess, but I didn’t. Also, once I found out, I assumed the book would go one direction, but it went another.

The Nature of Jade is only my second Caletti book, but I consider myself a fan. She creates wonderfully deep characters who go through interesting journeys. Even the non-viewpoint characters are fleshed out really well. Her writing is nice—great setting details, realistic dialogue that fits each character, and the internal thoughts are powerful. Take this:

Some guys give you the edgy feeling of dogs behind chain-link fences, and some give you the nervousness of high heels you’re not used to. But Sebastian—he makes me feel like I just buried my nose in warm laundry.

She also made me laugh (with understanding) with lines like this:

Blushing is so unfair. Might as well wear a sign: WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.

I have to mention the bizarre similarities between this book and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver books, which I don’t feel bad about because the two of them expressed the same surprise (I wrote about seeing them speak here). But it’s uncanny—neither knew about the other’s book when she wrote her book (the road to book-completion to publication is long, and the first Ruby Oliver book came out in 2005 and The Nature of Jade in early 2007). Ruby also lives in Seattle, has anxiety attacks, sees a therapist, and volunteers at Seattle’s zoo. Ruby lives in a houseboat and Jade’s boyfriend lives in one. Also, on a side note, there’s a guy named Titus in the story and Lockhart’s got a major character with that name in Fly on the Wall. Weirdness.

Anyway, that’s not important. If you like books about complex people facing difficult situations, you should enjoy this one.

* According to Merriam-Webster, this really is a word.

This book distressed me. Probably not in what could be said to be a good way, but in the right way (the way it was intended to).

The book is about a boy who is intentionally breaking his bones because he knows they grow back stronger. Jonah’s on a mission to break every single one in his body. This just gave me the willies every time he talked about it, or broke another. It’s hard to willfully break your own bones. I’m pretty sure that not many people can intentionally hurt themselves. It’s unnatural, after all.

So, it’s distressing to read about.

On top of his bone-breaking mission, Jonah has a complicated life: his parents fight all the time, he has an 8-month-old brother who screams constantly, and his 16-year-old brother, Jesse, is severely allergic to many foods. And Jonah feels responsible for taking care of Jesse. Jonah’s also got his friend Naomi, who films all his breaking, and a not-girlfriend named Charlotte who he makes out with.

We know going into the book that Jonah’s doing the bone-breaking because everything’s falling apart around him. And more than the first half is just more of that and all his family troubles and responsibilities. But then he gets found out about two-thirds of the way through the book and everything gets a little crazy. Unsurprisingly, Jonah’s self-destructive choices become a mental health issue and that has big consequences for him.

I’ll be honest—I’m not sure if I liked this book. It was definitely well-written (lots of realistic tough moments, well-drawn and believable characters, evocative use of language, and more). But the sense of discomfort was with me the whole time I was reading it. And once Jonah’s mental illness starts getting addressed, I felt like several improbable things happened. I also thought the ending left several things unresolved.

It still could easily appeal to a lot of readers, though. It’s definitely gritty and the characters are complicated and interesting. A lot of people will be able to relate to Jonah’s attempt at dealing with his problems in the wrong way.