I’ve been wanting to post about this for a while now, but I never got around to doing it….until now!
I was thinking a couple weeks about how many books about suicide, fairytales, sexuality and “quirky” books coming out this year. I’m not sure how I feel about using the word “trend” in this case, so I’m also going to go with “theme”. 🙂 This is going to be a part one of two parts post. This week I’ll be covering suicide, mental illness, LGBTQA and “quirky” books. (Don’t you just love how I put that in quotations every time?
I think suicide is a really important topic and I love the light being shined upon it. What I love most is that each of these books is talking about it from a different perspective.
In My Heart and Other Black Holes, the focus is on two characters who are planning their suicide.
In The Last Time We Say Goodbye, the main character is dealing with her brother’s suicide.
I Was Here is about the aftermath of Cody’s best friend Meg’s suicide and how she deals with it.
All The Bright Places (as many of us know) is about Finch and Violet who meet on the top of their school’s bell tower as they both plan to commit suicide.
Finally Playlist For The Dead also deals with the main character finding out why their best friend commit suicide.
I debated on whether or not to put all of the suicide books underneath mental illness, but I decided against that. I really love that mental illness is getting more focused on.
All The Bright Places– Finch suffers from mental illness.
In Made You Up, the main character is schizophrenic. This is really interesting because I’ve never read a book where a character dealt with that.
In Challenger Deep, the main character has a mental illness.
The Law of Loving Others features a main character who has to deal with her mother’s mental illness. I would love to read more books about teenagers dealing with their parents’ mental illness (like The Chance You Won’t Return by Annie Cardi). This is high on my priority list.
When Reason Breaks has one main character who suffers depression.
Ah, quirky, yes, I have no way to describe these novels, well, other than “These are the novels I’m so desperate to have”. Ha.
I’ll Meet You There takes place in Creek View, a place that sounds like it would definitely take place in the midwest where I live. Haha. The main character is desperate to get out of the city, but when her mom gets fired, she’s forced to stick around.
Mosquitoland, Mosquitoland reminds me a little bit of Probability of Miracles by Wendy Wunder. Mostly the journey part. 🙂 This sounds so original, it takes place on a Greyhound bus the main character takes to her see her mom. She of course meets travelers who are described as what else but quirky?
Denton Little’s Deathdate is about a guy who lives where everyone knows their own death date. Denton has a list of things he wants to do before he dies.
Bone Gap features a mystery involving Roza, a girl whose gone missing and Finn who believe she’s been kidnapped. You don’t get much quirkier than a town called Bone Gap.
No Parking At The End Times is about a girl whose parents have given everything to a guy known as Brother John, so they would be with him when the End Times came. Only they didn’t. And now Abigail has to fix her broken family.
In Vivian Apple At The End of The World, Vivian’s parents are super into the church of america and when they disappear, Vivian isn’t quite sure if the rapture has actually happened or not. She then goes off on a cross-country trip with her best friend and a guy named Peter to find out what’s really happened.
I like how there are more books coming out about intersex and transgender characters.
In The Art of Being Normal, the main character is a male to female transgender.
More Happy Than Not features a gay main character.
Not Otherwise Specified is about Etta who is bisexual.
None of The Above is about Kristin who finds out she is intersex.
The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley is about Andrew who is gay and meets a guy in the hospital where he now stays.
Finally, Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda is about Simon, who is gay and being blackmailed.
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