The Memory of Light

Stork, Francisco X. The Memory of Light. 2016. 336p. ISBN 9780545474320.

Viewed from the outside, Vicky Cruz's life is fantastic. Her father is rich, her sister is attending an Ivy League school, her house has a pool, and she has a nanny that prepares meals and cleans the house. Vicky had a poem published in the high school literary review, and though her grades are not great, she participates in the debate team. But ever since her mother died from cancer, Vicky has not felt well. Her father quickly remarried, her sister is mad at her, and no one talks about her mother anymore.

When Vicky wakes up at the hospital, she's surprised to be there. She meant for the pills she took to kill her, but she was discovered by her nanny before it was too late. Now Vicky finds herself on the 5th floor of the hospital, in the mental ward, where she meets Mona, Gabriel, and E.M., three other kids who are all here because of their own issues. Working with Dr. Desai, Vicky soon identifies her issue. She suffers from depression, a disease that creates large black clouds and even blacker thoughts, that she calls the uglies. These thoughts tell her that she's worthless, that no one loves her, and that the world would be better off if she were dead.

Her father is reluctant at first to leave her there for two weeks. He has arranged for a well-known psychiatrist to take care of Vicky, but Vicky for once stands up to him and demands to stay here. After two weeks, she heads out with the other kids to a ranch where they do physical labor while working on learning techniques to deal with their issues. But a series of incidents at the ranch forces Vicky to return to her old life prematurely, before she feels ready to go. With her father pressuring her to resume her old life, with people at school knowing what she did, and with her sister only now coming around, Vicky will need to find the courage to continue living.

Based on the author's own life experience dealing with depression, The Memory of Light explores how one recovers from a suicide attempt, and how one learns again that life is worth living.

The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett

Sedoti, Chelsea. The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett. 2017. 387p. 578 mins. ISBN 978-1-49263609-0. Available both as an ebook and an audiobook from Overdrive.

Lizzie Lovett had it all going for her. She was the most popular girl at school. She was polite, pretty, and appreciated by all. Well, not by all. Hawthorn has always been fascinated by Lizzie Lovett, who graduated with her brother three years ago. Hawthorn both loathes Lizzie for her easy way of life, and wishes she could be her. Unlike Lizzie, Hawthorn is gangly, almost friendless, self-centered, without goals or ambition, and suffers from a weird name and weirder parents. So when Lizzie disappears during a camping trip in the woods with her boyfriend Enzo, Hawthorn cannot avoid getting caught in the investigation into her disappearance. Plus, she's one of the first to know Lizzie has gone missing, so for once she can initiate the rumor mill and not be its subject.

Lizzie's vanishing suddenly triggers a wave of speculation in the sleepy town of Griffin Mills. Did her boyfriend kill her and bury her body? Did she walk out of the woods at night and has recreated herself elsewhere? Or did, as Hawthorn suspects, transform herself into a wolf? As Hawthorn digs around, she sinks even more in Lizzie's former life, spending time with Lizzie's boyfriend, though he may be the killer, working at the same restaurant Lizzie worked, and all the while accumulating more information about the girl people eventually forget as time moves on.

But what was once a passing interest becomes an all-consuming passion as Hawthorn pursues the ghost of Lizzie Lovett. Spending so much time looking for minute details in a girl's identity might cost Hawthorn her own...

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Vizzini, Ned. It's Kind of a Funny Story. 2006. 444p. ISBN 0-7868-5197-X. Available both as FIC VIZ on the library shelves and as an ebook on Overdrive.

When he was a kid, Craig loved drawing maps. For over a year, fifteen-years-old Craig Gilner has been spending most of his time preparing for possible admission to Executive Pre-Professional, a highly selective and elite high school in New York City. And when he wasn't doing that, he was with his best friend Aaron, smoking pot and pinning for Nia, Aaron's girlfriend. With that being done, however, Craig suddenly finds himself at a loss. He's working hard at his school, but he's only scoring 93%, while Aaron, who doesn't even try, is still top of the class.

Unable to cope and lacking strategies that would help him get through, Craig develops suicidal thoughts and ends up developing an eating disorder. Caught in a vicious circle, Craig ends up checking himself into a psychiatric facility near his house. Lacking room in the juvenile wing, Craig is placed instead on the 6th floor with adults, and he begins dealing with the issues that led him here. Onsite, he meets the other patients, including Noelle, another teenager who severely maimed herself to deal with the abuse she was suffering. Can Craig reconnects with his life and achieve some stability?

A running commentary of the events leading to and including his hospitalization told from Craig's perspective, It's Kind of a Funny Story provides a hilarious yet sobering look at mental illness and the pressures that children and teenagers experience in competitive educational environments. Readers will be cheering Craig on as he works through his problems and hope that he and Noelle are able to tame each other on their way out of the psychiatric unit. Fans of An Abundance of Katherines will appreciate the messy resolution that occurs at the end of the story.

The Awakening

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 2008. 282p. 283 mins. 978-1-51817167-3. Available as an audiobook on Overdrive.

Edna Pontellier and her husband Léonce are spending the summer months with their children at  a resort at Grand Isle, not far from New Orleans where they reside. Léonce is here for the weekend, and returns to the city for business during the week. As a woman, her roles are seen by society as caring for her children and supporting her husband. Edna chafes under these strictures, however, and does not feel fulfilled by the two traditional roles of mother and wife. On Grand Isle, she meets Mrs. Ratignolle, a woman with many children who enjoys motherhood very much. She also meets Mademoiselle Reisz, a gifted pianist who doesn’t care what society expects of her and instead marches to her own tune. She’s comfortable in her own skin and likes her single lifestyle.

More importantly, Edna meets Robert LeBrun, son of the resort’s owner, and, quite by accident, falls in love with him. Unfortunately, respectable life the 1890s New Orleans precludes divorce and frowns upon an extra-marital affair, especially for a woman. Scared that their relationship might grow, Robert takes off for Mexico, leaving Edna behind. Returning to New Orleans, Edna realizes that she’s tired of being someone she’s not, and she slowly emanciates herself from society’s demands. Léonce is concerned enough to contact a doctor, who tells him his wife is not mentally ill.

Needing to travel to New York for business, Léonce sends the children to his mother outside of New Orleans to give them a country holiday. Suddenly Edna finds herself alone for the first time, able to enjoy herself. She decides to move out of the house, and rents a small residence nearby. Still in contact with Mademoiselle Reisz, she reads the letters Robert sends to the piano player, and longs for him. The letters make it clear that Robert still has feelings for Edna. When Robert moves back to New Orleans, the two are reunited, but as love can be ephemeral, so too can it be fatal …

Over a hundred years old, The Awakening represents one of the first novels ever written to support a woman’s choice of seeking self-fulfilment, and presents an honest view of female sexuality. An early feminist novel, The Awakening continues to foster discussions about what it means to accept or refuse the roles society assign to women in general, and mothers in particular.

This is where the World Ends

Zhang, Amy. This is where the World Ends. 2016. 304p. 391 mins. ISBN 978-0-06-242141-8. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

Micah’s life changed forever when Janie moved in the house next door. Their bedroom windows were so close to each other that it was easy for them to move from one to the next. They immediately became best friends, and did everything together. Except in school, where they had to keep their friendship a secret at Janie’s insistence. Now in their senior year of high school, no one knows that Micah and Janie are best friends. Micah is shy, but Janie is exuberant. Micah doesn’t talk much, but Janie talks for the two of them. Their favorite place of refuge is the quarry, where they go every Thursday after school to spend time by the foot of the Metaphor, a large pile of concassed rocks left over from excavations years ago.

At the beginning of the year, for their English senior project they must choose a theme. Micah chooses the Apocalypse. Janie chooses Angels. Both joke that the quarry and the Metaphor is where the world will end. When Micah wakes up in the hospital in November, he doesn’t know why he’s here, and he remembers nothing of what happened. He keeps texting Janie, but she never writes back. Did she go to Nepal like she wanted?

Told in alternative chapters from Janie and Micah’s point of view, the story is divided in the before Micah’s memory lost, with Janie as the narrator, and the after, told by Micah. Struggling to rebuild his life and remember what happened, Micah is at a loss as to why Janie would leave him alone. Can he retrieve enough of his memories to finally piece together what happened on that fateful day where he was hurt and Janie disappeared from his life?

Fans of dark emotional stories that don’t end well will appreciate the issues that plague both teens. For a similar read, take a look at All the Bright Places or Zoe Letting Go.

All the Bright Places

Niven, Jennifer. All the Bright Places. 2015. 388p. ISBN 9780385755887. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

The school freak, Theodore Finch has been a target of his classmates for years, and a punching bag for his former NHL star dad. Morbidly fascinated by death, he knows all of the statistics dealing with suicide and has considered killing himself multiple times. He often loses track of months at a time, but now that he’s back and conscious he plans on remaining “awake” until he graduates.

So when he climbs the bell tower at school and considers what it would be like jumping, he notices that Violet Markey, another student at the school, is on the opposite ledge. With many witnesses on the ground below urging him to jump, he instead helps Violet step off the ledge and creates the story that she saved him by talking him off the ledge.

But why was Violet here? Theodore is intrigued, and wants to know more. Violet herself has suffered a tragedy when she and her sister got in a car accident last year and Eleanor died. Violet feels guilty. She’s the one who wanted to come back by crossing the bridge. It’s her fault that her sister is dead. She grieves for Eleanor, she grieves for herself and she grieve for the writing pair they used to be.

When a group project presents itself in the only class they share, Theodore volunteers to work with Violet, much to her chagrin. They must work together to discover the wonders of Indiana. They begin to discover that they have more in common than they thought, and that it this relationship which saved them both from the bell tower.

But as Violet begins to reconnect to life, Theodore barrels towards a complete disconnect. Will their love be stronger than the maelstrom of emotions and pain that surrounds them?

Told from both Theodore and Violet’s perspectives, this book is another tragic tale of death, suicide and its effects on those left behind. All the Bright Places manage to show that there is always an after. Ultimately, it’s a voyage of discovery that allows Violet to come to terms with her grief. Books with similar topics include Thirteen Reasons Why, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, We Were Liars, If I Stay, Zoe Letting Go, The Vanishing Season, Black Box or Kiss of Broken Glass.

The Program

Young, Suzanne. The Program. 2013. 405p. ISBN 9781442445802. Available at FIC YOU on the library shelves.

Suicide among teens has become an epidemic, with over one in four teens taking their life. At a loss, adults have turned to the Program, an intensive therapy involving involuntary commitment, heavy doses of sedatives and other chemicals, and forgetting one’s own memories. So far, the Program claims a 100% success rate in preventing suicide in teens who have been admitted and released.

But the Program is hated by all teens because it robs them of their memories and of their personalities. Teens that come out of the Program and are reinserted in society do not remember key events of their lives, and in many cases their personalities have changed.

Sloane and James, her brother’s best friend, have been dating for a while now, but when her brother committed suicide James was the only one left. As more and more people in her circle of friends succumb to the epidemic, Sloane worries that the Program will come for them. James is the first to crack, and is hauled away. When he returns eight weeks later, Sloane barely recognizes him. Feeling bitter and antagonized from society, she heads down a dark path. Her mother, worried for her daughter, has her committed to the Program.

Alone and terrified, Sloane tries to resist the therapy mandated by the program, but finds it more and more difficult. But then she meets Michael, another patient in the Program. He’s not James, but he wants to help Sloane. Can Sloane survive the eight weeks of treatment, and, more importantly, will she remember who she loves, and who she really is?

I Was Here

Forman, Gayle. I Was Here. 2015. 270p. ISBN 978-0-4514-7147-5. Available at FIC FOR on the library shelves.

Cody and Meg have always been two peas in the same pod. Hanging out together, they’ve made plans to go to college together. But a full scholarship to Cascade University meant that Meg got to go west to Tacoma, while Cody, poor and not as scholarly inclined, stayed behind in their little Eastern Washington town to work. The distance between them grew until it felt to Cody like they had fallen apart.

Then Meg committed suicide by drinking a bottle of cleaner by herself in a sleazy motel room. Cody never saw it coming. Meg never reached out to her for help, but she did send everyone she loved a time-delayed email explaining her decision. Devastated, Cody begins to spiral downwards in her own depression. How could she not have known? Why did Meg not seek her help? Cody’s life feels shattered, like the better half of her has been ripped apart.

Meg’s parents, the Garcias, have always been like Cody’s family. Trish, her single mom, has never really taken care of Cody, and all of her life milestones have been spent with them. When they ask her if she could go to Tacoma to pick up all of Meg’s things, Cody can only agree.

Once in Tacoma, however, she discovers there was a lot of things Meg had never shared with her. She’d never told her about the kittens she had adopted. About her roommates. About Ben McAllister, the guitar player who rocked in an Indie band and who dumped her after sleeping with her. About the websites where she spent so much time. And as Cody begins to put together the threads of Meg’s last months of life, she realizes everything she knew about her best friend was only one side of the story.

With the help from Meg’s former roommates and from Ben, Cody embarks on a dangerous trip to explore Meg’s suicide and discover who, really, was responsible for it. She’s worried, for she feels that she in fact was responsible for her best friend’s death, and that by failing her she may have doomed herself.

The reverse coin of If I Stay by the same author, this book explores suicide and the impact it has on those that are left behind. Another great read on the theme of suicide is Falling into Place.

Six Months Later

Richards, Natalie. Six Months Later. 2013. 323p. ISBN 978-1-4022-8551-6. Available as an eBook on Overdrive.

Chloe has always lived for the moment. Her motto might as well be “why do today what could be done tomorrow?” On a regular school day in May of her junior year, she puts her head down in her study hall instead of completing her assignment. When she wakes up, the room is dark, night has fallen, and there’s now coming down from the sky outside. In a panic, Chloe discovers she’s missed the last six months. Add to her terror the fact that Adam, the school criminal, shows up and tells her she just called him. What has Chloe been up to these last six months?

Her life changed dramatically once she joined the SAT study group. She’s now dating dreamy Blake. Her grades went from mediocre to outstanding, and she’s likely to be the valedictorian. She’s applying to Notre Dame and Brown, and knows she’ll get in with her perfect SAT scores. And she had a terrible fight with her best friend Maggie. Unfortunately, she doesn’t remember any of it.

Now that she knows something is missing, Chloe begins to reconstruct what happened to her, and all hints point towards Jillian, who moved away suddenly with her family from this sleepy Ohio town to California. But as she digs, she begins to discover that Blake scares her, she has feelings for Adam, Maggie is still mad at her but may come around, and her therapist may be involved in her memory loss.

As the pressure mounts, and as Chloe discovers her past, memories return. Poking around becomes deadly, however, and Chloe may not survive the truths she’s about to reveal.

Suspenseful and well-crafted, this book will be appreciated by fans of mysteries and realistic teen fiction with a twist.

Falling into Place

Zhang, Amy. Falling into Place. 2014. 304p. ISBN 978-0-06-229504-0. Available at FIC ZHA on the library shelves.

Liz Emerson has it all. She’s part of the popular crowd at Meridian High, and with her friends Julia and Kendra they rule the cafeteria and the social life of the school. But Liz is unhappy. So much so that she believes the world will be a better place without her. She plans her own suicide and makes it look like an accident when she hurls her car over a bridge during an icy winter day, on the same day her father died falling from the roof ten years ago.

But Liz never really understood the Newtonian laws of physics, and as she lay shattered and broken among the wreck of her Mercedes, she can only contemplate that the sky has never been this blue. And all of this happens right at the beginning of the book. As she lays dying in her hospital bed, unconscious and unaware, her friends wish for her survival, and hope that Liz is fighting as hard as she can. But they don’t know that Liz gave up on herself a long time ago. As the narrator eloquently points out, some people die because the world didn’t deserve them. Liz, however, feels like she does not deserve the world.

Liz is mean. She destroys lives because she can. She doesn’t like who she became, and she’s not sure where she went wrong. But she did, and now she can’t get out of the persona she built herself. Through snapshots and moments told in relation to the wreck, the reader sees previous events and Liz’s evolution from nice girl to monster is outlined, from her own perspective as well as that of her friends and enemies.

This book offers a different perspective on suicide. Generally we see how bullying pushes the victim towards attempting suicide, as in Thirteen Reasons Why. Sometimes we read about the impact of what happens to a relative or a friend of the attempter, like Black Box or Zoe Letting Go. But rarely do we see the road that leads a bullier towards suicide. The hard themes of this book will drop a tear or two and make the reader ponder what Liz never understood: That for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Just because Liz was never called out for what she did does not mean that she did not ultimately suffer from it.

Fans of e. lockhart’s We Were Liars and Gayle Forman's If I Stay will enjoy this book, as any lovers of tragedies.

Thirteen Reasons Why

Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. 2007. 304p. ISBN 1595141715. Available on the library shelves at FIC ASH and as an eBook on Overdrive.

Hannah Baker spent her whole life being ignored, reviled, hated, or picked on. Desperate, she committed suicide. Clay Jensen didn’t know her very well, but he feels like he could have done something about her misery.

So when Clay Jensen comes back from school and discovers a strange box with his name on it, he’s not sure what it is, or even why he’s receiving it. Opening the box, he discovers thirteen old cassette tapes. As he begins listening to them, he realizes that Hannah discusses, on each tape, the actions of one person who lead her towards her fateful decision. Every one of the people mentioned on the tape could have prevented her tragedy, and were an instrumental part of why she committed suicide. Each person, from the first to the last, must in turn listen to the thirteen tapes then send it to the next person in line. To find out how Clay contributed to Hannah’s suicide, he must listen to all the tapes, and hear Hannah’s story through her own words.

Told from two distinct voices, Hannah and Clay’s perspectives and stories show how small actions from many people can add up to a tragedy of deadly proportions.

If you liked this book, consider reading Please Ignore Vera Dietz, We Were Liars, If I Stay, Zoe Letting Go, Black Box, The Vanishing Season, or Kiss of Broken Glass. All of these books feature a tragedy and a voyage of self-discovery as the central element of the plot. Or read Falling into Place, where Liz Emerson's suicide attempts leads others to discover secrets about themselves they would rather forget.

Fake ID

Giles, Lamar. Fake ID. 2014. 303p. ISBN 0062121847. Available as an audiobook on Overdrive.

Nick Pearson is new at school. In this Virginia high school, there are always plenty of new students due to the presence of a military base nearby. But unlike those new kids, Nick Pearson is not whom he says he is. His father was the numbers and book man for a criminal organization, and they are in hiding in the Witness Protection program until such time as he can testify in the criminal case against his former boss. So Nick isn’t really Nick.

On his first day Nick runs into Reya Cruz, and is immediately smitten. Unfortunately, Reya’s boyfriend, Zack, notices and decides to take Nick out in the locker room. The timely intervention of Eli, Reya’s brother, saves Nick from a pounding, but now Nick owes Eli one.

Eli runs the school newspaper, and despite his protests, Nick soon becomes involved. Eli shares with him that he’s on to something big. Whispertown appears to be some sort of conspiracy that involves highly placed players, including Nick’s own father.

So when Eli is found dead, suspicion falls on Nick, who was the last person to see him alive. Though the police rules it a suicide, Nick knows better. Was his father involved? What is Whispertown? How does Reya fit into this plot? Can Nick solve this mystery before he becomes the next victim?

If you enjoy this mystery, consider Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes and The Great Greene Heist.

Black Box

Schumacher, Julie. Black Box. 2008. 176p. ISBN 0385735421. FIC SCH on the shelves of the library, and available both as an eBook and an audiobook from Overdrive.

Elena has just entered public high school, and is having trouble adjusting as she has always gone to a private school. Her sister Dora made that same transition two years ago, but now at the beginning of her junior year Dora has attempted suicide, and is confined to a hospital psychiatric ward.

Whereas Dora has always been outgoing, athletic, and vivacious, Elena is stoic and invisible. She is the rock upon which the rest of the family rely to keep them together. At a meeting with Dora, her sister asks Elena to keep her safe, and eventually Dora is released and returns home.

Amid all this confusing time, Elena is approached by the boy who sits behind her in her history class, Jimmy Zenk. His mother is a psychiatrist, and he tells her that his brother lived a similar experience to Dora. Elena is not willing to discuss Dora with him, but as Dora sinks further into depression and as hints are dropped that she might hurt herself again, Elena finds herself relying more and more on Jimmy’s own experience with his brother.

Throughout this chaos, can Elena manage to save her sister while remaining the rock she has always been? An amazing look at depression and suicide from the perspective of those who witness it and do not understand it, this book is a fast read, and very much along the lines of Thirteen Reasons Why.

If you liked this book, consider reading Thirteen Reasons Why, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, We Were Liars, If I Stay, Zoe Letting Go, The Vanishing Season, or Kiss of Broken Glass. All of these books feature a tragedy and a voyage of self-discovery as the central element of the plot.

Zoe Letting Go

Price, Nora. Zoe Letting Go. 2012. 279p. ISBN 978-1-59514-466-9. FIC PRI on the library shelves.

Sixteen years old Zoe Propp is unceremoniously driven and dropped off by her mother at Twin Birch, a facility that welcomes teen dealing with anorexia. Zoe has no idea why she’s here. Surely this must be a mistake. The other five girls that are here clearly belong as their bones stick out and they are clearly too skinny. But she’s not. So why is she here, instead of back home spending the summer vacation with her best friend Elise?

Throughout her stay at Twin Birch, Zoe begins the process of exploring what has happened to herself and to Elise, and learns to deal with the other girls in the facility. She passes the time by writing letters to Elise, since telephone calls, cell phones, and the internet are not allowed. Will Zoe finally realize why she is here before it’s too late?

If you liked this book, consider reading Thirteen Reasons Why, Please Ignore Vera Dietz, We Were Liars, If I Stay, Black Box, The Vanishing Season, or Kiss of Broken Glass. All of these books feature a tragedy and a voyage of self-discovery as the central element of the plot.