Mental Health Awareness Books

Hello All My Fellow Readers :)

Today I'm going to be focusing on something a little bit different than an average book review. I'm going to be addressing a couple of books that I recently finished that deal with a very important issue, and this is mental health. I read All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven, and Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella, and I was blown away by both of these books, and the differing ways they were able to get their message across.

I had heard a lot about both of these books. Finding Audrey is Sophie Kinsella's first YA novel, so that alone made it buzz worthy, but the fact that it dealt with mental health made it even more so. All The Bright Places is also Jennifer's Niven's first YA novel, and it has received much attention, even being movie propositioned with the movie set to come out in 2017, and starring Elle Fanning as Violet Markey. It also received the epic reads shimmy award for the mental health category, and so both of these books have been on my TBR list for quite sometime. I think it's important to see mental health addressed in books period, but I'm glad to see so many authors tackling it in the YA genre, cause these are very serious issues facing everyone, and teenagers are definitely included in this category. All The Bright Places shows what can happen when symptoms are easily dismissed as something else, and how parental neglect can cause life changing situations in regard to these conditions.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that All The Bright Places made me bawl. This book made me feel things so strongly that I felt like I had a book hangover for days afterwards. I'd heard some negative reviews about this book saying that it was a rip off of The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, and I heartily disagree with this assessment. I loved that book as well, but I think the subject matter of both if highly different. All The Bright Places is dealing with two students, Violet and Finch, who bond on the bell tower at school, both contemplating being up there for different reasons. Violet was in an accident that she walked away from, but her sister did not. And Finch feels he has no one who really pays him attention. He's dealing with a strong form of depression, the kids at school simply think he's a freak, and his parents are so wrapped up in their own lives and problems, that no one sees the suffering going on under the surface. Violet and Finch are able to help each other through grief that no one else understands, but it's a lot to put on the shoulders of a teenager, and sometimes having someone to understand is not enough to save the situation.

One important aspect that All The Bright Places deals with is parental inattention to the signs of these serious illnesses. Neither Violet nor Finch's parents truly understand the depth of issues they're prospective children are dealing with, and it really shows the serious consequences that arise when these symptoms are left alone, and not dealt with properly. While Finch is a quirky character throughout the book, and they're are definitely some comedic parts, this is a really intense story, that deals with very important issues, and I gave it five out five stars.

My Favorite Quote: "You are all the colors in one, at full brightness."

Finding Audrey approaches the mental illness topic from a much different perspective. Sophie Kinsella manages to stress the importance of these illnesses using her signature quirky sense of humor that readers have grown to love in her other best selling novels like The Shopaholic Series. Audrey is traumatized from an event that occurred at school by a couple of the popular girls. While the reader is never told exactly what happened, we simply know that she was the victim of some harsh, school bullying that has left her with high anxiety disorders, and she can't be around anyone other than her family, and requires wearing dark sunglasses at all times so know one can truly see into her eyes. One day, an offhand encounter with her brother's friend Linus, leads to an anxiety attack that has Audrey hiding in her room, and Linus stressing that he caused her so much extra pain. So Linus makes it his mission to help Audrey come back to living the life she had before the incident, and slowly, slowly we see Linus help Audrey to overcome many of her fears. One negative component I had seen many people comment on in their reviews was the fact that they felt that Sophie Kinsella was saying that Audrey was fine as soon as a boy started paying her attention, and was giving the message that a teenage girl needs a boy's attention to be herself again. This is not my opinion at all! I felt the reader is clearly shown that Audrey starts pushing herself because someone starts helping her to do so, not strictly because it's a cute boy giving her attention. Also, she learns the hard way that she's not truly "fixed" just because Linus has been helping her. In short, I really enjoyed this book and I especially love how she wove such a complicated story about a  girl struggling with mental illness around a hilarious story of a family who's obsessed with the fact that their son if becoming addicted to video games. Only Sophie Kinsella could manage to tell such an amazing, touching mental illness story, around a story of a zany family that reminded me of the Nicholson family in the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison. I gave this book four of five stars, and I highly recommend giving it a chance as well.

My Favorite Quote: "But they're like vortexes too. They're infinite. You look someone straight in the eye and your whole soul can be sucked out in a nanosecond. That's what it feels like. Other people's eyes are limitless and that's what scares me."

In conclusion, I just want to say how much I enjoyed both of these books, and the awareness they are both bringing to mental health. I think both these authors tackled very important issues in their own way, and both are highly recommended reads by me. As much as I love contemporaries, dystopians, paranormals, supernaturals, and such, it's also important to read about real issues affecting society today, and how we have the resources to help rather than hinder the progress with identifying people struggling with these kind of illnesses. I highly recommend checking these books out, or any others books that deal with the topic of Mental Health Awareness.

Thanks For Reading everyone, and I will hopefully see you back here soon.

This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own. The picture was taken by me with an iphone.