“Crazy isn't being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It's you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever.”

Set in the late 60's, after meeting with a psychiatrist and denying a suicide attempt, Susanna Kaysen was taken to a psychiatric hospital. She tells her story about the next two years she spent living in the ward with other "troubled" girls.

If you're at all familiar with "treatment centers", boarding schools for troubled kids, or anything under that realm, this book can feel a little too relatable. As a reader you get attached to the girls in the story. I couldn't help but empathize with all of them. It can be eye opening for anyone who struggles with mental illness. I also highly recommend the movie adaptation. Angelina Jolie, Winona, Brittney Murphy- the unhinged femme babes of the 90's and early 2000's.

“I told her once I wasn’t good at anything. She told me survival is a talent.”