Man, you think you're having a hard year? Get to know Brett and he'll put some things into perspective. And he's just a teenager. We meet Brett as he takes an Uber to multiple fast food joints, drunk, to get lots and lots of chicken nuggets and other treats. He's treating himself and soothing his hurt, as he's been living with his best friend and his dad, since Brett's adoptive mother has gotten too sick with cancer to take care of him anymore. Feeling homeless and abandoned for a second time, the fact that Brett's been gaining a lot of weight and his best friend looks like a Greek god, doesn't help matters at all. His weekly meetings with the school counselor help, but she also pushes him in ways that are uncomfortable. Some nights, instead of drunkenly Ubering to fast food, he breaks into his adoptive mom's house and drinks from a bottle he's stashed in his old room, and hangs out on the trampoline in the back yard and looks at the stars, and all the constellations he's come up with himself, like the Cool Ranch Dorito, which play into the superhero comic books he's been writing and hiding around the school. As his coping methods continue to prove inadequate, he starts vomiting. And he also starts hanging out with Mallory, a fat girl he's disdained until now. When his journal shows up online, he just can't anymore. Things have gotten too much for him. And he has to reach out for help.
This was a raw, passionate, whip-crack of a novel that explored a lot of topics, including a boy with an eating disorder which is almost never shown in media, in such an emotional and heart-rending way that I couldn't put it down. It was touching and fun and exhilarating and heartbreaking. Asking for help can be the hardest thing. And the most important thing. Some days the universe is just kicking you while you're down. But others can help you get through.
This book is published by Henry Holt BYR, a division of Macmillan, my employer.
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