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quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Solomon:
“Do you ever think about being out there again? Like all the way out there?”
“I didn’t use to,” he said. “Not much anyway. Just the thought of it would give me a panic attack.”
“And now?”
“It’s still terrifying. But I can at least talk about it without crying, so that’s a win.”
17-year-old Lisa Praytor is driven and ambitious. A straight-A student, she wants to get a scholarship to Woodlawn University because it has the second best psychology programme in the US. To do this, she has to write an essay titled ‘My Person Experience With Mental Illness’. Fortunately, three years earlier Solomon Reed – a kid in the year below her at school – had an epic melt down at school, undressing and getting into a fountain. No one’s seen Solomon since, but Lisa figures that if she can find him and cure him, then the scholarship will be in the bag. Roping her boyfriend, Clarke into helping her, she befriends Solomon’s dentist mother and uses her to get to Solomon. But the more she gets to know Solomon, with his agoraphobia and anxiety issues, the more she gets to like him and the harder she finds it to use him for her own ends …
John Corey Whaley’s YA novel is a slickly plotted mental illness issues tale that didn’t come good for me. My main problem with it was that I wasn’t convinced by its depiction of Solomon’s agoraphobia (portrayed as a virtual inability to leave the house, fed into by his decision not to push himself outside). For me it seemed a shallow portrayal with Solomon very dismissive of the treatments and therapies that he’s tried and yet there’s no real attempt to understand what the cause of it is or what feeds into and triggers it (although I did find it easier to empathise with his anxiety attacks, which are sensitively shown). I thought that the progression of his story was predictable but there was little emotional growth beyond the joys of friendship. I found Lisa a very difficult character to form a connection with because she’s so set on using Solomon for her own ends and I really didn’t understand the basis for her relationship with Clark (who’s written as too good to be true and saddled with everyone querying if he’s gay for not wanting sex with Lisa). Ultimately it’s fast paced and events rock along nicely but although it’s obviously making a play for the John Green market, there just isn’t enough here to resonate with readers and emotionally it’s was rather two-dimensional for me. That said, I would check out Whaley’s other work given how tightly this is written.
The Verdict:
John Corey Whaley’s YA novel is a slickly plotted mental illness issues tale that didn’t come good for me. My main problem with it was that I wasn’t convinced by its depiction of Solomon’s agoraphobia (portrayed as a virtual inability to leave the house, fed into by his decision not to push himself outside). For me it seemed a shallow portrayal with Solomon very dismissive of the treatments and therapies that he’s tried and yet there’s no real attempt to understand what the cause of it is or what feeds into and triggers it (although I did find it easier to empathise with his anxiety attacks, which are sensitively shown). I thought that the progression of his story was predictable but there was little emotional growth beyond the joys of friendship. I found Lisa a very difficult character to form a connection with because she’s so set on using Solomon for her own ends and I really didn’t understand the basis for her relationship with Clark (who’s written as too good to be true and saddled with everyone querying if he’s gay for not wanting sex with Lisa). Ultimately it’s fast paced and events rock along nicely but although it’s obviously making a play for the John Green market, there just isn’t enough here to resonate with readers and emotionally it’s was rather two-dimensional for me. That said, I would check out Whaley’s other work given how tightly this is written.
HIGHLY ILLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR was released in the United Kingdom on 26th May 2016. Thanks to Faber & Faber for the review copy of this book.
“Do you ever think about being out there again? Like all the way out there?”
“I didn’t use to,” he said. “Not much anyway. Just the thought of it would give me a panic attack.”
“And now?”
“It’s still terrifying. But I can at least talk about it without crying, so that’s a win.”
17-year-old Lisa Praytor is driven and ambitious. A straight-A student, she wants to get a scholarship to Woodlawn University because it has the second best psychology programme in the US. To do this, she has to write an essay titled ‘My Person Experience With Mental Illness’. Fortunately, three years earlier Solomon Reed – a kid in the year below her at school – had an epic melt down at school, undressing and getting into a fountain. No one’s seen Solomon since, but Lisa figures that if she can find him and cure him, then the scholarship will be in the bag. Roping her boyfriend, Clarke into helping her, she befriends Solomon’s dentist mother and uses her to get to Solomon. But the more she gets to know Solomon, with his agoraphobia and anxiety issues, the more she gets to like him and the harder she finds it to use him for her own ends …
John Corey Whaley’s YA novel is a slickly plotted mental illness issues tale that didn’t come good for me. My main problem with it was that I wasn’t convinced by its depiction of Solomon’s agoraphobia (portrayed as a virtual inability to leave the house, fed into by his decision not to push himself outside). For me it seemed a shallow portrayal with Solomon very dismissive of the treatments and therapies that he’s tried and yet there’s no real attempt to understand what the cause of it is or what feeds into and triggers it (although I did find it easier to empathise with his anxiety attacks, which are sensitively shown). I thought that the progression of his story was predictable but there was little emotional growth beyond the joys of friendship. I found Lisa a very difficult character to form a connection with because she’s so set on using Solomon for her own ends and I really didn’t understand the basis for her relationship with Clark (who’s written as too good to be true and saddled with everyone querying if he’s gay for not wanting sex with Lisa). Ultimately it’s fast paced and events rock along nicely but although it’s obviously making a play for the John Green market, there just isn’t enough here to resonate with readers and emotionally it’s was rather two-dimensional for me. That said, I would check out Whaley’s other work given how tightly this is written.
The Verdict:
John Corey Whaley’s YA novel is a slickly plotted mental illness issues tale that didn’t come good for me. My main problem with it was that I wasn’t convinced by its depiction of Solomon’s agoraphobia (portrayed as a virtual inability to leave the house, fed into by his decision not to push himself outside). For me it seemed a shallow portrayal with Solomon very dismissive of the treatments and therapies that he’s tried and yet there’s no real attempt to understand what the cause of it is or what feeds into and triggers it (although I did find it easier to empathise with his anxiety attacks, which are sensitively shown). I thought that the progression of his story was predictable but there was little emotional growth beyond the joys of friendship. I found Lisa a very difficult character to form a connection with because she’s so set on using Solomon for her own ends and I really didn’t understand the basis for her relationship with Clark (who’s written as too good to be true and saddled with everyone querying if he’s gay for not wanting sex with Lisa). Ultimately it’s fast paced and events rock along nicely but although it’s obviously making a play for the John Green market, there just isn’t enough here to resonate with readers and emotionally it’s was rather two-dimensional for me. That said, I would check out Whaley’s other work given how tightly this is written.
HIGHLY ILLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR was released in the United Kingdom on 26th May 2016. Thanks to Faber & Faber for the review copy of this book.
