Fiction

Review by Fariha, with "thanks a lot to HBG Canada for providing an ARC to read and review!"
Release Date: February 7, 2017
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

A Tragic Kind of Wonderful follows Mel, a 16-year-old who is dealing with bipolar disorder. The novel explores how the mental illness affects her life and her experiences and her relationships.

I read this book right after reading History Is All You Left Me and I couldn’t ignore how similar the two novels are. They both contain peeks into the past as we get to see what happened before the books started, both explore mental illnesses (that perhaps don’t get as much recognition. Bipolar Disorder and OCD are not talked about or explored as much as some others, such as depression and anxiety), a lot of characters aren’t straight, and both main characters deal with losing a loved one. However, they’re both so incredibly different at the same time, in atmosphere and characters and how the story progresses.

This book has quite the large cast of characters and I thought the author attempted to give some characters unique personalities and develop them. However, many of the characters felt extremely flat (especially Holly and Declan) and were only there to serve one specific purpose. I wish we had a smaller band of characters to keep track of and that they were much more developed, with their own personalities and quirks, rather than a large list of two-dimensional cut-outs perfect for the role they play in the novel.

The way the novel depicted Bipolar Disorder was quite interesting. I learned some things and thought the animal-chart technique was quite cool. I cannot speak for how accurate it is because I am not diagnosed with the mental illness, nor do I know anybody who is, so take everything I say with a grain of salt but I thought the author was well-researched and tried to accurately depict what someone in Mel’s position would go through. However, I felt at times that the disorder was, unfortunately, getting shoved to the side to make room for something else, such as the romance.

The romance felt incredibly forced and unnecessary to me. I think David and Mel could have been perfectly good friends and not started up a romance that did not feel natural; or better yet, David ceased to exist and it was Connor or Holly who filled in the places where David was necessary. The lack of romance would have made the novel flow more naturally as it truly felt like an afterthought and we would have another dimension added to an existing character instead of adding David’s character with his flimsy personality.

The book started off kind of slow and for a while I wasn’t sure where the story was progressing. However, the last quarter of the book had me captivated and I was intrigued. My feelings about the book are so conflicted, I really liked some parts and other parts I just wanted to be over, so I’m giving it a tentative 3 stars.

Place a hold on A Tragic Kind of Wonderful, by Eric Lindstrom.