From the Publisher
" and worthy choice for high school libraries." — School Library Journal, starred review
"This compelling character study begins like a thriller—the mystery of what happened to her friend Agnes draws considerable suspense... it becomes a nuanced exploration of mental illness." — Booklist
"A compelling and beautifully told story." — Kathleen Glasgow, New York Times bestselling author of Girl in Pieces
"A tense and terrific read." — Natalie D. Richards, author of One Was Lost and What You Hide
"A great story full of mystery, heartbreak, and hope." — Jennifer Shaw Wolf, author of Dead Girls Don’t Lie and Breaking Beautiful
"Intense, compelling, and wholly original." — Kerry Kletter, author of The First Time She Drowned
"An honest look at one young person’s experience with mental illness, as well as the impact mental disease has on others." — School Library Connection
"A respectful, authentic rendering of mental illness and treatment." — Kirkus Reviews
School Library Journal
★ 12/01/2018
Gr 10 Up{amp}mdash;Hannah Gold knows that there has been a terrible misunderstanding. She spent an enjoyable several weeks at a college summer program in California, where she formed a tight friendship with her roommate, Agnes. Now she is being carefully monitored and denied basic privileges at a high security institution. While she goes through the events of the past few weeks in her head, she tries to make sense of the tragic accident that sent Agnes falling two stories to the concrete below their dorm window. Although Hannah had been secretly seeing Agnes's boyfriend, Jonah, she knows that she would never have done anything to harm Agnes physically. Through conversations with her therapist, brief interactions with other inmates, and constant internal dialogue, Hannah analyzes her privileged childhood as an only child of wealthy parents in New York City, and wonders if she is not the person she always thought she was. Sheinmel creates an intensely likable unreliable narrator. Hannah's voice is convincingly realistic, highlighting the subtle nuances that make up the thought processes of a troubled teenager. Though the novel centers on the theme of mental illness and its devastating consequences, it is fully engaging and manages to avoid being too gloomy. The author's beautiful prose strikes a perfect balance between serious emotion and humorous dialogue. VERDICT A thrilling page-turner and worthy choice for high school libraries.{amp}mdash;Karin Greenberg, Manhasset High School, Manhasset, NY
Kirkus Reviews
2018-11-07
A highly intelligent teen lays out all the reasons she has been wrongly accused of a crime.
Hannah knows it's a mistake that she's been institutionalized. She and her friend Agnes were just playing games, and it's a terrible tragedy that Agnes fell out of a second-story window. All Hannah wants is to be at her friend's bedside, but instead she's stuck in this mental institution being questioned daily by Dr. Lightfoot and kept separate from all the other patients. It's not until she gains a roommate, Lucy, that Hannah begins to connect with someone, and soon she is allowed small excursions out of her room for lunch and showers. Finally she has someone she can take care of and guide, as she did Agnes, while she waits for the error of her involuntary commitment to be rectified. She's confident that everything will be taken care of soon. It becomes clear early on that something is off about Hannah's account of the summer school program where she met Agnes, who later became her best friend, and about the night Agnes fell. It's just a question of exactly which parts of her story we can trust and which we can't. Hannah is white by default (as is Agnes) and Jewish, Lucy is coded Latinx, and there is some diversity in secondary characters.
Not an astoundingly surprising plot but a respectful, authentic rendering of mental illness and treatment nonetheless. (Thriller. 14-18)
