I’ve enjoyed other books by this author, and this one was good as well! There was a lot that really made me angry for our main character. The fact that Brynn was the one who got suspended for a fight she tried to break up, one that with her disability caused her to have to go to the hospital ER, was just wow. I couldn’t believe that a school could be that blind to it. The fact that it was a private school though, really filled in the issue and then I could see how things might go that way.

Brynn’s history with friends and how they’d treated her either once they knew about her disability, or how they soon decided they were inconvenienced by it, totally made sense in why she didn’t tell her friends or even her last boyfriend. How no one at school had any idea what she dealt with. It made sense that she kept it to herself. And she had built a whole new persona about not being sick. But all of that pressure, then breaking up with her boyfriend because of a remark he made about not understanding or wanting to have to be sick like that all the time, all of it piled up on top of Brynn. And when things got crazy at school, it was like she exploded. Not only at the people at school, but at her family. Her father had the same disease, so while he understood what she was going through, he had to also make her see that maybe she was giving up. Maybe she hadn’t fought for what was right, what she wanted/needed.

There was a lot about this story that I liked, and I think I’ll probably recommend it for my state’s reading award, as I think the point of view of someone with this type of a chronic disease, as well as how the pandemic affected them is something that there are teens this will either resonate with as they see themselves in the character, or else it could help show those who have no idea what this is like a bit of walking on someone else’s shoes.

Another great book by Bethany Mangle.