January 30, 2023
After Brynn shares an emotional post online, prompting her mother to fear that she’s suicidal, her mom sends Brynn to stay with her father on his Florida houseboat for the summer, hoping that being offline will improve her mental state. While navigating anxiety and intrusive thoughts about death and disaster, Brynn begins exploring the bayou on her father’s paddleboard. Out among the trees, she finds a mysterious girl named Skylar, who invites Brynn to meet her the next day at a hidden beach. Brynn excitedly tells her father about her new friend, but she’s shocked after he reveals that the girl she saw purportedly took her own life five years ago. Brynn confronts the ghost of Skylar, who insists she was murdered, and vows to find the killer, persisting even as the investigation reopens old wounds for Brynn’s father, the town, and Skylar’s parents. Mora (Fragile Remedy) renders Brynn, Skylar, and their respective parents’ emotions with the grace and sympathy necessary for the heavy topics addressed. Intense emotional situations and the lightly supernatural premise, coupled with Brynn’s growing self-compassion regarding her own mental health, make for a simultaneously devastating and uplifting telling. Main characters read as white. Ages 14–up.
Starred review from April 1, 2023
Gr 9 Up-A queer teen living under the weight of intrusive thoughts of impending doom navigates summer on a houseboat with a father she barely knows. Brynn lives with a list of mental health diagnoses (ADHD, OCD, SAD, GAD, to name a few) that she carries like an anchor, sure she is bringing down her mother, as she hides on Tumblr away from other people. After Brynn posts an emotional message in a moment of darkness, her best online friend contacts her mom, and she is sent to her father's for the summer. If it wasn't bad enough to find herself on a tiny houseboat in the middle of the Florida Bayou (with countless dangers), her father has agreed to her mother's one rule-no internet or phone. Alongside the ghost of a girl who finally understands her, Brynn will have to choose whether to confront her intrusive thoughts about her new environment or risk the reality of the alternative. An author's note opens the book with a list of trigger warnings and the author's disclosure of their own lived experience with mental illness. The main characters are white, and Brynn identifies as bisexual. The story weaves together many important topics including suicide, mental illness, divorced families, natural disasters, and grief. Despite the heaviness of subject matter, Mora tells Brynn's story with grace, authenticity, and hope. VERDICT A compelling story highlighting the raw reality of living with a mental illness. Recommended first purchase for all collections serving older teens.-Elizabeth Portillo
Copyright 2023 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from March 15, 2023
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* After 15-year-old Brynn writes a Tumblr post about wanting to die, her mom sends her to stay for the summer with her dad, who lives on a houseboat in the swamps of Florida. But though Brynn's half-hearted Tumblr post wasn't ultimately serious, her mental illnesses are: her intense anxiety and OCD mean she is constantly riddled with intrusive thoughts about death, and while she doesn't truly want to die, she struggles to explain how difficult living can be. Florida, with its alligators and snakes, its hurricanes and disease-carrying insects, overwhelms her. And then, on a tentative solo paddleboarding outing, she meets Skylar: a girl in a yellow bikini who's a little mean, a lot confident, and seems to actually see Brynn. Bisexual Brynn is drawn to Skylar immediately, but something seems off, and Brynn soon learns that Skylar is the ghost of a girl who drowned several years ago in the bayou. Skylar's family believes she died by suicide, but she insists she was murdered, and Brynn is determined to discover the truth. Mora (Fragile Remedy, 2021) walks a delicate line with their sophomore novel, and while Brynn's narration is often agonizingly tender, it is never overwrought. Brynn's parents, while they may not understand exactly what she's living through, parent her with compassion and support. Without shying away from the ways mental illness can impact a life, Brynn's story blooms with hope and fierce love, and every step feels earned.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from January 1, 2023
Exiled to live with her father, 15-year-old queer girl Brynn faces a summer without the internet, her phone, or her friends. When Brynn's parents divorced, her father left Ohio to live off the grid on a houseboat in Florida. She hasn't seen him since fifth grade, but now she is spending the next three months alone with him, all because she shared a post on Tumblr that she should have deleted, a post she now regrets. In the bayou, Brynn meets Skylar, a hot girl with sharp edges and a secret--she died five years ago. As Brynn gets to know Skylar, she hyperfixates on learning the truth about the circumstances surrounding her death. This haunting, heartbreaking, and healing coming-of-age story explores disability and mental illness by centering a character who is learning to acknowledge and navigate feeling overwhelmed by anxiety as well as ashamed of her diagnoses, which include OCD, ADHD, and seasonal affective disorder. Mora represents truthful, thorny complexity in Brynn's relationships with her parents, who are supportive and hold themselves accountable for their mistakes. Themes of connection and community equally affirm the value of in-person and online relationships. Experiencing time away from screens helps highlight rather than dismiss the beauty and significance of Brynn's engagement in artistic expression within fan communities. Main characters are White; there is racial diversity in the supporting cast. Raw and compassionate. (author's note) (Paranormal. 14-18)
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.