DNF 40%

I TRIED. I did really try.

DNF-ing this book pains me. It hurts my booklover heart. Because it's not that this book is bad, it's that I am just not into it. I am seriously struggling to get through it and I find hard picking it up. The characters don't interest me, I am zero engaged and I don't really think it's a good enough portrayal of the mental illness it presents.

But it wouldn't be fair to elaborate because I can't even remember the main character names.
For me it's definitely a forgettable read, but maybe you love it so I'll let you be the judge of it.

For Mel, life has been hard. At just sixteen years old, she is struggling to cope with the fact that her younger brother is dead and that they both in fact have bipolar disorder.

Mix into the issues her old friends want nothing to do with her and one of them, Annie has left town to go live in Paris parting with leaving, Zumi and Connor's belongings on Mel's doorstep after not speaking for ages. This leads the way for Mel to talk to them and their relationship slowly over the novel repairs.

Mel has also not told them about her being bipolar and hides it from them. She does cope well with her job, caring for others in a residential care home which I feel reflects that she is kind and accepting of everyone's issues with health in life. It is also there she meets David, the boy whom see's her as more than just the bipolar girl.

During the book as secrets are revealed from Mel's past, the turbulence in her relationships is thrown into turmoil and we see her bipolar disorder switch gears and reflects truthfully how sometimes intermission by hospital or sectioning helps and doesn't hinder the individual but stops them harming themselves intentionally or otherwise.

The raw open account of what it's like to live with bipolar and how you feel the world see's you against what they really view you like makes this book even more truthful and appealing. Thank you to the publishers allowing me to review this book, I encourage anyone with or without bipolar to read this book to help to understand the condition more.

The story of Mel and her ways of dealing with her bipolar disorder, as well as her fractured relationships with her friends and what happened to her brother Nolan.

While this book isn't hugely different to some others of a similar ilk I have read of late, I did really enjoy it. Mel is an interesting character that you can actually grow to like, understand somewhat and care about. You actually want to know why Zumi and Connor stopped talking to her, you want to know what happened with Annie and you absolutely want her relationship with David to develop. She is a particularly caring and interesting girl, and finally not someone who is a wet blanket that needs a relationship to save her, and someone who doesn't experience any more tragedy than they have to (Eleanor and Park I'm looking at you - I'm still heartbroken).

I enjoyed Mel's narration, I enjoyed the insight into her disorder and how she views her Aunt Joan, Hurricane Joan or HJ for short, who also suffers from this disorder. Happily the surprise did work as a surprise, I hadn't worked it out (hurrah for that one) and it also didn't lead to a chain reaction of sad clichés. Mel does struggle, she does have problems and she does shut herself away - but she also has a network behind her and people who care. She isn't left to it, she is helped. And that was a big difference to me. She isn't pressured into anything, she is looked after and loved and about time to.

I only scored it 3 because as much as I enjoyed it, I also know I won't remember a huge amount of it in a couple of months down the line. Sad but true. A lot of these books do merge into each other after a while! It was enough to make me look up Lindstrom's other novel and I am looking forward to that.

Actual rating: 2.5 Stars

I have mixed feelings about this book. Up to 70% this was a solid 4-5 stars, but the last 30% was very disappointing for me.

Let's talk about the positive things first.

I absolutely loved the writing. I usually find teenagers in YA books to be kind of fake - they are either too perfect or too messed up, and too often they feel more like mini-adults than proper teenagers. I didn't feel like that with any of the kids in this book. They are kind and they are brats, loyal and traitors, good students that get drunk on a night out, they are the best and the worst of friends - in one word: they are real.

The characters were also wonderfully diverse, but you never get the impression that this diversity is forced on the story the way it happens in other books.

Now about the story itself.. I didn't know that the MC in this book had bipolar disorder when I requested it. The only other YA book I've read about this is All the Bright Places, which I loved, but after reading this I wonder if the vision we get in that book isn't a bit romanticised.. Mel's awareness of her condition and her struggle to be 'normal' were heartbreaking and even though I absolutely loved Finch, Mel felt more real and raw.

And then we reach the final 30% and everything turns into a soap opera :(

SPOILERS AHEAD

I've often complained about the necessity most YA authors feel to introduce romance in their books. In this case I wasn't too bothered about it because the relationship between Mel and David felt more like the possibility of romance than actual romance, even if they kind of jump into a relationship towards the end.

The book also explains the relationship Mel had with her friends Annie, Zumi and Connor. They were the bestest of friends, then Annie and Mel had a massive fall out and sides were taken. We learn that this happened about the time Mel was diagnosed as bipolar, so instead of trying to plead her case to Zumi and Connor she decides that they're better off without her and cuts them off her life completely.

Back to the present, Annie moves to Paris without bothering to say goodbye to Zumi and Connor, because that's the kind of girl she is, but she tells Mel because of reasons. Now Mel has to break the news to her ex-friends, and while Connor is ok with it, Zumi takes it really hard because she was in love with Annie. Mel wants to help Zumi, but Zumi wants nothing to do with her after the way she just abandoned them. Things happen, they talk and turns out that Mel and Annie stopped talking because Mel called the other girl out on the way she was leading Zumi on and treating her like dirt just because she could (Annie was indeed gay, or at least bisexual, she was just not interested in Zumi). Mel didn't want to explain to Zumi that her best friend and crush really didn't give a damn about her, so she decided to stop talking to them just to spare Zumi's feelings. Let's not forget that all these things happen at the same time Mel has her first big episode. Oh, and we also have Mel's brother story and her unresolved issues with him. So, plenty of stuff to talk about in the book.

Which is why it pissed me off royally when it's revealed that Mel and Annie actually fought because they hooked up and afterwards Mel wanted to stop it because she didn't even like Annie, it was just one of the ways her bipolar disorder was manifesting. At this point I'm like, WTF?? Later Mel talks to her doctor and explore the possibility that Mel is in fact bisexual, but still, WTF??

So of course Zumi finds out in the end and there's drama. Like, DRAMA. I understand that this was supposed to be the proverbial last drop for Mel, but I think there was already plenty of stuff going on in her life that could have acted as a trigger for her disorder. To me this was completely unnecessary and almost ruined a book that otherwise I was enjoying very much.

The book has a happy, bittersweet ending but at this point I wasn't that invested in the story anymore, so I didn't properly enjoy it.

I would recommend this book to fans of a bit more mature YA books.

Mel Hannigan is 16 years old and is coming to terms with having bipolar disorder. Only her parents, her aunt and a friend of her late grandmother, who lives in the nursing home where Mel works, knows about Mel's condition. Mel is trying to cope with her brother's death, her parents divorcing and Mel and her mother moving to a new town. She spends a lot of time at Silver Sands, the retirement home, where she meets David, a boy she's interested in. Her life can be a bit unpredictable so she tries to compartmentalise her life to help her cope better with everything. When a former friend gets in contact with her, Mel is baffled as to why she's trying to talk to her and afraid of the secrets that might come out and threaten to disrupt Mel's life and mental health.

First off, let's talk about the cover! It's so beautiful! YA books are killing it cover wise these days. I enjoyed Lindstrom's previous book Not If I See You First and so I was really looking forward to this release and in fact I think I enjoyed it more than the previous book. I liked the character of Mel, as well as the other characters in the book. Lindstrom has a way of writing these characters so they feel real and believable and not cliched. I do think there was a lot going on plot wise for Mel to be dealing with (brother's death, parents divorcing, the big issue with the friends, the love story as well as the mental health aspect) and I think one or two of those arcs could have been dropped or trimmed a bit, but what I do like about this book is how the mental health element isn't the BIG problem in the book. It is certainly a central one, don't get me wrong, but I feel like we're reading about a character has all these other issues to deal with and the bipolar disorder doesn't necessarily make everything else harder, these would be issues any teenager would deal with regardless of the mental health diagnosis (just like how in Not If I See You First Parker's blindness is part of the story but it's not the big issue. It's a girl who has problems she's dealing with who just so happens to be blind). What I really liked about this book is how we see Mel managing her condition. Therapy, medication, hospitalisation, keeping track of one's moods and having family and friends for support are all things that crop up, as does the issue of just because one or more of these things work for one person, doesn't mean it will work for the next person, that dealing with mental health issues is personal to the person experiencing them. I thought this was fantastic and something that is well worth pointing out. This book lived up to my expectations and I look forward to Lindstrom's next novel!

A book that you can sink into and just read without any distractions is always a good find. Lindstrom's characters both in Not If I See You First and A Tragic Kind of Wonderful are so easy to get to know and with both books I've found myself completely involved in their world in a way that some books completely fail to achieve.

This is a book about acceptance. To gain any real kind of friendship or relationship, Mel has to let them into her life. She has to share her secrets and hope that they still like her after they find out. It's a struggle that I think many of us face in some way or another and so is easy to relate too. I also think the feeling of being watched all the time and having people hyper-attentive to your change in moods is another thing that a lot of people with mental illness can relate to.

I am not familiar enough with Bipolar Disorder to say if Lindstrom has depicted it well, but the rest of the book, the characters, the fear of telling people and the feeling of having a mental illness in general was well captured.

Eric Lindstrom is definitely an author I trust to get a good story from.

I am so torn with how to rate this book. I had so many feelings and emotions, and there were some parts I just loved, and some parts I just hated.

I was looking forward to reading this book for months, and I received an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review (which I was incredibly excited about). As soon as I started this book, I got into it straight away (which almost never happens with me!) So that is a big plus about A Tragic Kind of Wonderful.

Mel Hannigan is a sixteen year old who struggles with bipolar disorder. This book is a story about how she copes and deals with her mental health on a day-to-day basis as she goes on with her life. What makes this book different to most other books about mental health, is that you can clearly see her mood and mental state (I don't want to spoil it, but it's very cool), and you can see her 'mixed' states, which is something other books don't tackle frequently.

I have devised a pros and cons list of this book, as I really did find it difficult to rate the book, and I hope this might help to explain why:

Pros
1. The book was easy to get into (as mentioned above), and I got so into it I didn't even realise as I read through pages and pages in one sitting (in fact, I stayed up until 4:30am one night without even noticing the time).
2. I really loved the writing style. I particularly loved how the syntax and writing changed as Mel's mood and mental states changed. You could clearly see the writing become uncontrolled when her mood was the same, and the writing seeming calmer when she was calm.
3. I loved her interaction with the people of Silver Sands. I am someone who personally struggles to have meaningful conversation with others unless I know them really well, and when I was reading those chapters, I felt in awe of Mel's skills to speak so easily and make people feel at ease.

Cons
1. The first half of the book was incredible, but the second half seemed to be trying to do too much, which stemmed away from the main theme of the book. I felt that some events were giving me an adrenaline rush as I was so into the book; however, they were unneeded and took attention away from Mel and her health.
2. David and Mel's flirtations developed quickly, and too soon in my opinion. It seemed a bit too insta-love for my liking in the first half, as I felt we didn't really get to know him. However, I did like how the 'love interest' did not cause the book to stem away from the central idea, and I also liked David and Mel in the second half.

Eric Lindstrom is certainly a talented writer. However, all in all, I feel like this is a book that unfortunately won't resonate with me in the future, but I believe it did have the potential to. However, I really enjoyed the writing style, and I would recommend this book for anyone who wants a quick, emotional read that tackles a serious mental health disorder.