The Existence of Amy
The Existence of Amy is an empathetic, inside look into the way severe mental health disorders can affect a person’s life. It taught me a lot.
Author: Lana Grace Riva
Publisher: Self-published via Amazon
Goodreads | The StoryGraph
Normally, I don’t encourage people to buy books from Amazon, but because this book is self-published by an independent author, it’s the only way to buy it. Support indie authors however you can. <3
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
Amy has a normal life. That is, if you were to go by a definition of 'no immediate obvious indicators of peculiarity', and you didn't know her very well. She has good friends, a good job, a nice enough home. This normality, however, is precariously plastered on top of a different life. A life that is Amy's real life. The only one her brain will let her lead.
TL;DR Review
The Existence of Amy is an empathetic, inside look into the way severe mental health disorders can affect a person’s life. It taught me a lot.
For you if: You want to learn more about what it’s like to suffer from OCD and depression.
Full Review
A few months ago, the author, Lana Grace Riva, reached out to me via email to see if I’d be interested in receiving a copy of The Existence of Amy for review. It is independently published through Amazon. Thank you, Lana, for sending it my way. I’m glad you did.
The Existence of Amy is told in the first person, from the perspective of a woman suffering from severe, constant OCD and episodes of depression. Every day is a struggle — to get out of bed, to face public transportation, to interact with others at work, to keep from disappointing her friends when she’s too overwhelmed to keep her promises to them. Then t opportunity to travel to Australia for work, combined with the steady support of one good friend, helps her push herself outside her comfort zone a bit, which sets the rest of the story into motion.
It took me a bit of time to fall into step with the writing, but I eventually came to understand it as part of Amy’s characterization. She’s nervous, she over-analyzes, over-explains, under-explains. She’s struggling. Once I got used to it, the book read quickly but impactfully. So hang in there with it.
This book covers a lot of ground, including how best to support someone struggling with severe mental health disorders — how to be an ally. But the most impactful thing, for me, was actually the character of Sally. I saw a lot of myself in Sally — she’s the mom of the group, she makes plans for and takes care of others because she truly cares about them, and it hurts her when those plans and attempts to help fall through. She doesn’t understand, and she’s frustrated, but it’s from a place of love and hurt. Still, her reactions aren’t helpful for Amy. It made me think about some of my own loved ones, and the moments I’ve certainly been the Sally in their lives. And it made me want to be more patient, more understanding in the future.
For that alone, the afternoon spent reading this book was worth it.
Trigger Warnings
OCD and triggers
Panic attacks
Severe depression
You Exist Too Much
You Exist Too Much is an engaging story about a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman that raises all sorts of questions about depiction, family trauma, and mental health.
Author: Zaina Arafat
Publisher: Catapult
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop,* which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.
Cover Description
On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgement will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.
Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East ― from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine ― Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.
Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings ― for love, and a place to call home.
TL;DR Review
You Exist Too Much is an engaging story about a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman that raises all sorts of questions about depiction, family trauma, and mental health.
For you if: You like character-driven novels where the characters grapple with tough challenges, particularly related to culture and queerness.
Full Review
Big thanks to Catapult for providing me with an early review copy of this book!
You Exist Too Much is a book that really got me thinking — about stereotypes, about complexity, about family and generational trauma, and about the way books can depict all those things.
The book is about a young Palestinian-American bisexual woman. She’s struggling to figure out how to bring the different pieces of her life together, as her mother will not be supportive of her queer lifestyle. Indeed, when she tries to tell her mother that her roommate is her long-term girlfriend, it’s a disaster. But her relationship with her girlfriend is also at risk.
As we will come to learn stems from deep-seated family trauma (“Good luck finding someone to love you like I did,” her mother hurls at her), the main character is notoriously unfaithful and treats romantic encounters like addicts treat drugs: as a distraction from reality, a way to feel something, a way to avoid dealing with her fears. She becomes obsessed with the version of a person she builds up in her mind and will destroy her own life against the rocks as she pursues them.
The story follows the main character as she seeks addiction therapy and begins the long journey of breaking her unhealthy compulsions and learning to build healthy relationships, with herself, with romantic partners, and maybe with her mother as well.
There is a lot about this book that I don’t have first-hand experience with — queerness, addiction treatment, family trauma, cultural disconnect — and so I can’t really speak to how well these were represented. That being said, here’s how they seemed to me, an outsider.
This is the first book I’ve ever read depicting queerness through a Palestinian-American lens, and that feels important. But it also brings up the question of whether this book harms bisexual people by playing into stereotypes about them being chronically unfaithful, throwing themselves at anyone and everyone. Personally, I felt like the author did this character justice, giving her a big, round enough background that it was clear her unhealthy behaviors were not because of her sexuality but because of the family trauma she’d experienced her whole life. That feels like a way to make space for stories that may be someone’s real truth, even if parts of them align with stereotypes.
I also find myself meditating on the question of how different this book would be if the main character had these unhealthy behaviors, but was straight. I think in many ways, one could tell this story that way, in that the triggers and backstory could plausibly cause it. And that is why it feels nuanced enough to move past the stereotypes. And yet also, you cannot change the fact that she’s bisexual without losing a sense of this book’s urgency and truth, because the character would not be her strong, rebellious, nuanced self without it. You would lose the half of the story that is not directly about her addiction.
I would really love to hear other people’s perspectives on this point in particular. As I said, I am an outsider to these experiences.
I do think that the way mental health and addiction treatment is depicted in this book felt like it was not as nuanced as it could be. But since her treatment is only the first half of the book and her recovery — which has so many bumps along the way — is the second, it seems like that may be because there was not a lot of space devoted to it,
Still, I think this book is absolutely worth your read, if only to spark you to contemplate these things, like it did for me.
Trigger Warnings
Addiction, substance abuse, alcoholism, and overdose
Eating disorders
Homophobia and familial non-acceptance
Infidelity
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives
Successful Aging is a scientific but well-written and interesting look at current thinking about how the brain works and how you can protect it as you age.
Author: Daniel J. Levitin
Publisher: Dutton Books
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Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop,* which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.
Cover Description
Successful Aging delivers powerful insights:
Debunking the myth that memory always declines with age
Confirming that "health span" — not "life span" — is what matters
Proving that sixty-plus years is a unique and newly recognized developmental stage
Recommending that people look forward to joy, as reminiscing doesn't promote health
Levitin looks at the science behind what we all can learn from those who age joyously, as well as how to adapt our culture to take full advantage of older people's wisdom and experience. Throughout his exploration of what aging really means, using research from developmental neuroscience and the psychology of individual differences, Levitin reveals resilience strategies and practical, cognitive enhancing tricks everyone should do as they age.
Successful Aging inspires a powerful new approach to how readers think about our final decades, and it will revolutionize the way we plan for old age as individuals, family members, and citizens within a society where the average life expectancy continues to rise.
TL;DR Review
Successful Aging is a scientific but well-written and interesting look at current thinking about how the brain works and how you can protect it as you age.
For you if: You are a curious person and don’t mind reading a lot of scientific info.
Full Review
I got my hands on a copy of Successful Aging through the Next Big Idea Club. I wouldn’t normally reach for a book like this on my own, but I’m glad I read it! I was feeling especially curious and drawn to nonfiction one weekend, so I picked it up. And it certainly scratched my curious itch!
This book is an in-depth look at how the brain works (at least, what we know of it today) and how we can protect it as we age in order to live happily and fully for as long as possible. It’s very scientific, but I was impressed with how Daniel Levitin didn’t make it feel like a textbook. Don’t get me wrong; there are a lot of biological words and concepts here. But the way the book was written made them feel as conversational as I think it’s possible to be on a topic like this.
The book definitely inspired me to tweak a few of my habits. He emphasizes things we already know are good for us — sleeping well, eating moderately well, moving our bodies every so often — but clarifies why those things are important for the brain, specifically. It also opened my eyes to the psychology and emotional motivations typical for older adults, which I think will help me interact with my 97-year-old great grandmother specifically!
Several times while I was reading, I looked up and asked my husband, “Did you know that ___?” And I think that’s the mark of a good scientific nonfiction.
Trigger Warnings
None
*This is an affiliate link to Bookshop.org, an online alternative to buying books on Amazon. A portion of every sale goes directly to independent bookstores! When you buy a book using my link, I will also receive a small commission. Thank you for supporting indies. They need us.
Ask Again, Yes
Rating: 5/5 | There are stories, and then there are stories. This is a rich, delicious novel that makes you forget there's an outside world. There's only this handful of characters and the love and heartbreak between them. (Click the post to read more.)
Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope are two NYPD rookies assigned to the same Bronx precinct in 1973. They aren’t close friends on the job, but end up living next door to each other outside the city. What goes on behind closed doors in both houses — the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne, sets the stage for the stunning events to come.
Ask Again, Yes by award-winning author Mary Beth Keane, is a beautifully moving exploration of the friendship and love that blossoms between Francis’s youngest daughter, Kate, and Brian’s son, Peter, who are born six months apart. In the spring of Kate and Peter’s eighth grade year a violent event divides the neighbors, the Stanhopes are forced to move away, and the children are forbidden to have any further contact.
But Kate and Peter find a way back to each other, and their relationship is tested by the echoes from their past. Ask Again, Yes reveals how the events of childhood look different when reexamined from the distance of adulthood — villains lose their menace, and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.
Author: Mary Beth Keane | Publisher: Scribner
Rating: 5/5
Thank you so very much to NetGalley and Scribner for giving me an advanced reading copy of this book for review! It will be published May 28th.
There are stories, and then there are stories. This is a rich, delicious novel that makes you forget there's an outside world. There's only this handful of characters and the love and heartbreak between them.
The two main characters are Kate — the youngest of three daughters to Francis and Lena — and Peter, the only son of Brian and Anne. But the narrative starts with Francis' perspective as a young police officer in the Bronx. He yearns for the suburbs, an escape from the stress and violence of his job and a return to a world sort of like his childhood in Ireland. Lena never wanted to leave NYC, but she can see it's important to him. Still, she's lonely. Then Brian — Francis' partner but not quite friend — and Anne move in next door. Lena tries to make friends with Anne, but Anne will strangely have none of it.
So Kate and Peter grow up next to each other, and from the very beginning, they know intuitively that their souls are entwined. And yet their parents' chilly animosity to one another won't let them just be. When they're about 14, they're torn apart by a terrifying, violent night that will impact every day of the rest of their lives. But years later, they reconnect, and then their own relationship becomes the forefront of the story. But it's not simple, and it's not easy — the scars our childhoods leave behind never are.
Rather than switching POVs between chapters, the narrative weaves between the characters' points of view seamlessly from one sentence to the next. When they're young, most is from Peter; when they're adults, most is from Kate. And a bit is from each of their parents, too.
The story has really strong themes of love, childhood trauma, mental health, the danger of pretending to the world that everything is fine at home when it's not. Also addiction, the repetition of parents' mistakes, and acceptance. So much to pack into a relatively short novel, but wow, was it beautiful and heartbreaking and just meant to exist.
Queenie
Rating: 4/5 | Alright, y'all. I have complicated feelings about this book. It was well written, and super important, and said a lot of things very much worth hearing about race and mental health. But I — a type-A who compulsively tries to fix problems everywhere I see them — was not built to enjoy reading it. (Click the post to read more.)
Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth.
As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.
Author: Candice Carty-Williams | Publisher: Orion Publishing
Rating: 4/5
Alright, y'all. I have complicated feelings about this book. It was well written, and super important, and said a lot of things very much worth hearing about race and mental health. But I — a type-A who compulsively tries to fix problems everywhere I see them — was not built to enjoy reading it.
Queenie is a millennial in her first job, an entry-level magazine editor in London. When the story starts, she's just started a break with her long-term boyfriend. We get the sense that she is a lot to handle and very unwilling to let others in. She's outwardly unapologetic about this, which pushes people away even more, but inwardly she feels halfway regret. This became too much for Tom, and he asked her to move out.
Now she has to figure out who she is and hope that he will come back. But she can't quite find herself between all the destructive decisions she knows she shouldn't make, but somehow does anyway. She's got a small group of girls who love and support her, and they're trying their best to help steer her in a healthy direction while allowing her to make her own choices.
Her depression and anxiety bloom out of control, which is when we get more insight into the racial and family dynamics that are also shaping her journey. She has to find the strength and resolve to pick herself back up and become the person she knows she can be.
As I read the book — which, by the way, is told very creatively with texts, emails, etc. thrown in there — I just felt more and more anxious. Queenie was spiraling, but there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Everything she was working toward was not going to be good for her. I finished the book with great relief.
Still, I admire the author and the story, because it's brave and important. Somehow the writing was simultaneously light and funny while also being heavy and heart-wrenching.
Worthy of your time, for sure. But be prepared for discomfort.