Interlude by Chantele Sedgwick

Interlude is a classic story of a boy and a girl thrown together unexpectedly, each struggling with their own problems, who fall in love. The novel opens with eighteen-year-old Mia Cox in her doctor's office. She's there to get tested to determine if she's a compatible match so she can donate a kidney to her younger sister Madison (Maddy). Dr. Mason discusses the risks of donating a kidney and tells Mia that she will know in two weeks.

Weeks later, Mia takes Maddy to her dialysis treatment which she undergoes three times per week. Mia is very worried about her sister who is tired and withdrawn. She is in the final stages of kidney disease which is renal failure.
At dinner that night, Mia gets a call from the doctor's office informing her that she is not a match and therefore not suitable to donate a kidney to Maddy. Mia retreats to her bedroom, completely distraught but also determined. She pulls out an old birthday card sent by her birth mother, Carmen Santalina from fifteen years earlier. Mia and Maddy's mother Carmen, abandoned them when Mia was three years old. Her father moved to from New York to California where he remarried.

With a plan formulating in her head, Mia questions her father as to whether Carmen still lives in New York City. However, he will only tell her that Carmen won't care, even when Mia begs him to at least call her and tell her about Maddy's illness. Furious at her father's refusal, Mia googles Carmen's name to locate her in New York. She is interrupted by Maddy who come to her bedroom and then collapses. Mia screams for her father, the paramedics are called, and Maddy is rushed to hospital.

At the hospital, Maddy is stabilized but weak and she confides to Mia that she knows she's going to die, that a donor will not be found in time. Mia tries to encourage Maddy, who believes it is too late for her. Determined to save her sister Mia goes home, packs a backpack, writes her father a note, and drives to the airport where she books herself onto a flight to New York City. Her hope is to find their birth mother and convince her to donate a kidney to Maddy.

On the flight, a guy about Mia's age, with dark hair and an eyebrow piercing, is seated next to her. He is slouched down in the seat, not talkative, his earbuds in, listening to music. Part way through the flight, Mia notices the distinctive tattoo on his arm. When he picks up an entertainment magazine, Mai mutters about not liking the band Blue Fire and its lead singer, Jaxton Scott featured on the cover. Mia's remark is overheard by him and he questions her as to why she doesn't like them. Mia tells him she believes they have no talent, their image is creepy with the makeup, black nail polish and piercings, and that they are "fakers". The conversation makes Mia curious about the article on Blue Fire. As she's reading it, a closer look at the picture of Jaxton Scott leads Mia to recognize the tattoo on his arm as the same as the one on the man seated next to her. To her embarrassment,  Mia realizes she's sitting next to Jaxton Scott.

Mia tries to apologize, but Jaxton insists he's not offended and appreciates her honesty. Jaxton tells Mia that he is "taking a spontaneous vacation to New York. Indefinitely."  He has no gig, no girlfriend, no bodyguards or groupies. When Jaxton questions Mia about her trip, at first she is reluctant to tell him her reason for flying to the city, only that she is sightseeing. However, Jaxton can sense that Mia is not telling him the truth and that she's running from something. He reassures her that everything she reads about him is fake, that it is all show.

Mia tells Jaxton about her sister's terminal illness and that her trip to New York is to locate their birth mother who is the only other person likely to be a match. Jaxton tells Mia he is "The screw-up who's running away from  his life." He tells her that his band formed in high school and by their junior year, they had a record contract. On tour he managed to finish his senior year of high school, but there were also parties, tours and playing huge venues. Jaxton insists all he wants to do is write music. When Mia questions him as to why he's doing this if it's not what he wants, he tells her it is difficult to get out of contracts, so this trip is a break to try to figure things out by returning home to his family on Long Island.

After a lay over in Denver, Mia and Jaxton board their flight to New York. Jaxton arranges for Mia to sit next to him, and invites her to really listen to his music. When it becomes apparent that Mia has no where to stay and that she has no idea how to locate her birth mother, Jaxton insists on helping her. But Mia is reluctant to accept Jaxton's help because she really doesn't know him, so to remedy this, he spends some time telling Mia more about himself in the hopes she will feel safer. As their flight nears its destination, Jaxton offers to put Mia up in a hotel overlooking Central Park. Mia balks at this because she cannot afford it but Jaxton insists. As they spend time together, Mia knows she has to stay focused on finding her birth mother and helping save Maddy, even as her attachment to Jaxton grows.

Discussion

Although Sedgwick's novel, Interlude is a predictable YA romance, it is both enjoyable and sweet, with the added bonus of a happy ending. Mia and Jaxton, from very different worlds, each dealing with very serious life problems, are inadvertently thrown together and fall in love. Jaxton has the image of a bad boy rocker in contrast to Mia's clean girl image. While Mia seems to have her life together and knows what she wants, Jaxton is struggling to deal with his rock star lifestyle.  Their time together is seen as an "interlude" in their lives.

The story is told from the point of view of Mia who astutely identifies the situation both she and Jaxton are in. "We're two people running from different things in our lives. One of us is running to save another, the other is running to save himself." Both Jaxton and Mia love music: Jaxton is a song writer and lead singer in a rock band, while Mia is an accomplished pianist. While talking on the plane about music, Jaxton mentions that he loves preludes which he describes as "...the most important part of the song, I think. It has to be distinct. Different  than everything else out there. It's like the hook. Or the tease before the masterpiece, if you will."  But Mia loves the interlude which she sees as the solo in the middle of a song, that gives a break from the lyrics. Their time spent on the plane is the interlude for both Jax and Mia, a time away from the stresses of their lives, where they can just be themselves and not deal with their worries. It is the break for Jax from his rock star life and for Mia it is a break from the worry about finding a donor for Maddy and her illness.

The themes of sisterhood and family can be found throughout the novel. Mia is devoted to her sister as evidenced by her willingness to take her sister Maddy to her dialysis treatments and to stay with her for the three hours it takes to clean her blood. Mia is determined to save her. She is willing to donate a kidney to her sister but when that becomes impossible, Mia impulsively and in desperation, decides to travel across the continent to find their estranged biological mother. Although this isn't successful in the way Mia planned, it does work out in the end.

Sedgwick's story stresses the importance of family. Jax tells Mia, "I talk to my mom at least once a week. My sister Jeigh, usually every day. We've always been really close. I have another sister, but she's a bit younger, so I don't hear from her as much. I love hanging out with her when I go home, though."  For Mia, despite being abandoned by her birth mother at age three, she is very close to her father and her stepmother, Trista. "I can't imagine living my life without Trista. She's been a wonderful mother to me."  Because Mia has such a strong sense of family with her father, Trista and Maddy, she is stung by her birth mother Carmen's complete rejection of herself and Maddy being "family". Carmen tells Mia that Maddy is not her daughter. "I might have been a mother to you once, and I'm sorry for all the pain I caused you, but I was never a mother to Madison. I held her once...She's a stranger to me and she has no recollection of me either. I don't owe her anything." Fortunately for Maddy, Carmen's sister, Ana does not feel this way and decides to undergo testing to see if she is a possible donor.

Sedgwick admits she had to do considerable research into kidney disease and organ donation. Live donor organ donation is somewhat controversial because of the risks to the donor. However, live donor kidney donation is the most common and the most successful of all transplants. Interlude is a light, enjoyable read, with well developed and interesting characters. Suitable for ages 13 to 18.

Book Details:

Interlude by Chantele Sedgwick
New York: Sky Pony Press    2018
275 pp.

A Heart Like Ringo Starr by Linda Oatman High

A Heart Like Ringo Starr is an utterly predictable but sweet story about a young girl whose hopes for a normal life come true.

Faith Hope Stevens was born with a congenital heart defect. Prognosis: likely to die before her nineteenth birthday.  Faith's family runs the Stevens Brothers Funeral Home in Seafoam, Delaware where she lives with her mom and dad and her eight year old brother, Lenny.

"Dead people downstairs,
live humans upstairs --"

Great-Aunt Mary, whom Faith refers to as the "antique fairy" is eccentric in her dress. A hippie from the 1960's Mary tells Faith that love is what matters in life.

Due to her health problems, Faith has been homeschooled. She has little energy to do physical activity.  Her mother is in denial about the possibility of Faith dying from her heart. Lately Faith has been losing weight and shopping trip to Sears with her mother doesn't lift Faith's spirits. No teenager wants to shop at Sears for clothing.

Faith is on the waiting list for a new heart. As a member of "Here's-A-Wish", Faith and her family are entitled to a vacation to Walt Disney World. The vacation in Orlando is magical for Faith and her family. But Faith knows wishing upon a star won't help her. She also knows her parents are grieving about her situation. Faith has a long bucket list of things she wants to do in life as any young person would. But what Faith wants most is
"...a heart
that keeps
the beat
of me 
perfectly,
in dreamy
seamless
rhythm:

Never missing.
Never dropping."

"I want a heart
like a drummer,
a heart
like Ringo Starr,
a heart
to take me
far."

Lenny is impressed with Faith's bucket list but he wants her to have a boyfriend.

"You need to find
your knight
in shining armor,"
Lenny says.

Shortly after they return home, Faith's father must prepare the body of Vinnie Green, a boy Faith's age who was killed in a crash down the road from their house. Vinnie was found drowned in Black Creek. Shortly after this, Faith's father receives a call that there is a heart for her. Faith may finally realize her dream of living a normal life. She will have to confront her own fears of living a life very different from what she's used to.

Discussion

A Heart Like Ringo Starr is a novel in verse and is different from most novels in this genre because the poetry mostly rhymes. This makes A Heart Like Ringo Starr somewhat unusual to read. Like most novels in verse, the storyline is sparse but Oatman High's poetry does convey the story well. Life for Faith before she receives her new heart is vastly different from teens her age. She lives at home where she is schooled and she isn't physically very active. She has typical teenage dreams - to travel, to go to prom, to skydive, to go to concerts and to climb mountains. Despite this Faith has come to terms with her life as it is. However, her entire life changes dramatically after suddenly receiving a new heart. Faith feels lost  and finds herself wishing for her old life and even her damaged heart. As a senior in high school, she doesn't belong and has no friends. She feels like a freak. On a whim, Faith travels to Rehoboth at her Aunt Mary's suggestion where they look for sea glass. On the beach, she stumbles into a handsome guy Jimmy Winters, and from this point on, Faith's entire life is suddenly transformed. Like Faith, Jimmy too came to the beach on a whim. The two seem to connect instantly and this connection changes Faith. She falls instantly in love with Jimmy who seems to accept her as she is. On the surface Faith's radical transformation after meeting Jimmy might feel contrived yet it points out how we all need that connection to someone to feel whole. Faith never experienced this before because her health was always a barrier.

Jimmy Winter's connection to Vinnie Green and Vinnie's connection to Faith stretches credibility, although it is possible. It is this connection that pulls Jimmy and Faith even closer together and makes Faith feel "bereft". This twist in the story is predictable but nonetheless touching.

Oatman High seems to lead readers to incorrectly believe that dead people can donate organs.  Vinnie Green was "found drowned, in Black Creek"  which suggests he had no vital signs when found. Vinnie's organs would not be suitable for donation; major organs can only be donated prior to death. Once a person has died, the organs, especially major organs such as the heart, kidneys and liver are unusable for transplantation because they deteriorate almost immediately. They must be removed while the donor has a beating heart.

A Heart Like Ringo Starr is a quick read for those interested in sick lit, those who enjoy reading novels in verse and like a feel good ending.Recommended for high-low collections.

Book Details:

A Heart Like Ringo Starr by Linda Oatman High
Saddleback Educational Publishing      2015
250 pp.

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider

"At Latham House, we were asked to believe in unlikely miracles. In second chances. We woke up each morning hoping that the odds had somehow swung in our favor."

Extraordinary Means is a moving novel about two teens whose lives are changed forever when they contract a (fictitious) deadly form of drug-resistant tuberculosis and are sent to a sanitarium in the hopes that they might get a second chance at life.

Seventeen-year-old Lane Rosen was entering his senior year of high school and had his life all planned out. He was enrolled in Advanced Placement courses before he got sick. He'd taken AP Physics Lab, volunteered at the health clinic, participated in Model UN, done SAT prep courses and started a Carbon Footprint Awareness Club to boost his application. His marks were good enough so far to potentially guarantee him a spot at Stanford. His plan was "to land a summer banking internship at twenty, graduate in three years, and recruit straight to Wall Street." By the time he was twenty-three, Lane hoped to have all his school loans paid off and then attend either business or law school.

However, all this seems to be on hold now that Lane has been diagnosed with an incurable strain of tuberculosis known as TDR-TB (total drug resistant-TB). As a result he's sent to Latham House, a sanitarium in the Santa Cruz mountains in the hopes he can recover. Latham House used to be a private school but has now been converted into a sanitarium.  "The eight cottages were arranged in a half-moon, around a gazebo in desperate need of a paint job...Each cottage had around twenty residents...The first floor was a lounge area with dilapidated plaid sofas, a long study table, and stacks  of board games." All the residents at Latham House are teens and all wear medic wrist bands that monitor their vitals.

Expecting to be met by his "First-Day Ambassador, Grant Harden", Lane finds himself on his own, navigating the showers, the breakfast line and classes. In the breakfast line he meets Nikhil Patel (Nick) who tells him to fill his plate when he goes through the line to avoid getting a "strike". As he goes through the line a second time, Lane spots a petite blond girl named Sadie who doesn't care if she only has a mug of tea and who seems familiar to him. Not knowing where to sit he ends up at a table with a girl named Genevieve and her friends. Meanwhile, Nick has gone to sit at Sadie's table. The dining hall at Latham is filled with kids eating and talking but also coughing, "like a symphony of sickness."

During his first day, Lane notices Nick and Sadie along with two others taking off into the woods during the after-lunch break.  Later on he sees her return with her group and remembers Sadie being in summer camp with him before going into grade eight. He remembers her as a loner who was always taking pictures with her camera. Other than that, Lane doesn't remember much more about her.

Lane is checked over by Dr. Barons at Latham House. Barons tells Lane that he has two lesions on his right lung that they need to watch and that Lane needs to stick to his schedule which means breakfast at 8am, nature walks and yoga, rest periods in his room and bedtime at 9pm. Barons wants Lane to concentrate on getting well but Lane wants to get back to his life. A life that weeks ago meant he "was a straight shot to the college of his choice." He decides that he will work hard in his room doing the work he brought from home rather than resting.

Sadie Bennett is also seventeen years old. She has spent the past fifteen months at Latham House. In her sophomore year, Sadie fainted in phys ed and was told at the ER that she had an active case of tuberculosis. In the woods with Nick, and her friends Marina and Charlie Sadie reflects on seeing Lane and on being a Latham House. A loner in her old life, at Latham House she has a group of friends with whom she breaks the rules and spends her time on her photography.

Sadie doesn't want to meet Lane who she believes remembers her as "the outcast girl who sat alone in the arts and crafts tent making friendship bracelets for her American Girl doll." However the inevitable meeting happens at the end of Lane's first night at dinner. Lane remembers that they attended Camp Griffith and is nice to Sadie which only infuriates her.  Sadie remembers that summer - the year her parents were in the middle of divorcing. Taunted by a group of bullying girls in her cabin. Then she saw Lane in the woods looking at her when she was taking pictures with her camera. After asking one of the girls about him, and before the seniors dance at camp, Sadie is given a note supposedly penned by Lane along with his sunglasses. The note asks her to the dance. However the night of the dance, Sadie waited in vain, filled with hope and excitement. Until she was given a note by one of the girls written by Lane saying he wasn't coming. She was humiliated and saddened.

Lane meanwhile, is puzzled by Sadie's reaction to him. After talking to his parents he calls his girlfriend Hannah who requests that he read her admissions essay. In French class the next day Sadie is mean to Lane when they have to perform short skits in front of the class. In the skit, Sadie tells Lane that he has only a little bit of TB but that he is lucky to live in France where there are drugs to treat it. Mr. Finnegan is furious with Sadie and explains to the class that the drugs which work on other forms of TB do not work on the TDR strain and actually kill the patients. After French class Lane is furious with Sadie but only for throwing the assignment.

Lane spends his first week suffering through the companionship of Genevieve, studying in the library and watching Sadie and her friends take off into the woods. However one day when Sadie and her friends Marina, Charlie and Nick come to the library to "steal" internet access, Lane saves them from being discovered by the librarian. When Sadie doesn't thank him, Lane asks her what her problem is. She tells him about what happened to her at camp three years earlier. Lane explains to Sadie that he never wrote the notes to her and his sunglasses were stolen.

The next morning Lane wakes up sick, running a fever and coughing up blood. Things go from bad to worse when he breaks up with Hannah over her admission's essay which was about him. Upset, Lane sits in the gazebo outside the cottages. Sadie sees he's very miserable and decides to talk to him. He tells her what happened between him and Hannah and they talk about how their lives have changed now that they have an incurable illness. When Lane goes in to see Dr. Barons for a second check-up, he finds his health has deteriorated as a result of him trying to keep up with his school work. He's lost weight, running a fever and sleeping poorly. Lane eventually confesses what he's been doing and promises to follow his treatment plan.

Lane becomes part of Sadie's clique, joining her and her friends at their lunch table and in the evening for movies. As time passes Lane begins to fit into Latham House, sneaking off the grounds and into nearby Whitley, and skipping Wellness. Lane and Sadie's friendship deepens. They begin calling each other on their room phones and spending time together in the library. Just when Lane finds himself part of Latham, the possibility of a new cure is presented. It will take some weeks before the treatment can begin. A cure means the hope of a future but what will that mean for Lane and Sadie?

Discussion

Extraordinary Means is a deeply touching novel about two teens trying to live their lives in spite of a serious and potentially incurable illness. The two main characters, Lane and Sadie, who narrate the novel, are very different. Lane is organized and focused. He knows what he wants in life and has planned everything accordingly. By his own admission he's "a head-down-and-grades-up sort of guy." At Harbor, Lane was one of those students teachers loved - "We were going somewhere in life, the teachers said, handing us extra-credit assignments instead of detention, study guides instead of busywork." Being sent to a sanitarium was not in his plans and has completely disrupted his life. He can't wait to get out and get back into the swing of his life. "But I could see that I wasn't getting through to Dr. Barons about how important it was for me to stay on track. I'd have to show him that Latham was working. That I was improving. And then he'd send me home."

Sadie on the other hand, has no such plans and has sees herself differently. She's been at Latham House for a long time, in fact, longer than anyone. Outside of the sanitarium, Sadie had been an outsider; the girl not involved in school, a loner with three friends who were always dating boys and going on group dates without her. Latham has made her part of a clique; finding "friends who hated the exact same things about it, mocking the rules and the teachers and Dr. Barons until we were laughing so hard we could barely breathe." She also views identifies herself as the disease. "Where I once was, there was now an active case of TB. Everything of who I was and who I wanted to be had been evicted to make room for the disease."

Initially Sadie's view of Lane is marred by a falsehood - the belief that he stood her up years ago at camp. The fact that she has never gotten over this incident demonstrates how little she has in her own life and how self-absorbed she is. Once this lie is uncovered, Sadie is able to recognize what really happened and move on. This leads her and Lane to begin to develop a friendship. Lane states that talking with her began to change his perspective on his situation and opened his eyes to the reality of his life. For the first time in months Lane feels understood and not alone.

Lane's time at Latham sees him change his perspective on his illness and his outlook on life. At first he feels like being at Latham is "like I was living someone else's life because this couldn't be mine." When his health declines further after working on his AP courses and Lane is forced to follow Latham's schedule he realizes "that just like everyone else, I was a patient here." His view of the other patients who crowded the TV room, read graphic novels and ransacked the DVD shelves changes. He originally viewed Sadie and her friends as trouble makers, "But now, the idea of getting in trouble sounded appealing...I was sick of being perfect, and maybe it was okay not to be, just for a while, just at Latham.
Maybe I could be a different version of myself here, one who didn't feel enormously guilty for watching a movie on a school night. Someone with a hobby that did nothing for my resume. Someone with friends, not just a friend group."

Lane realizes his approach to life at Latham was wrong and he becomes determined to fix it. In French class when at a dare from Sadie, he takes on the role of the instructor during the teacher's absence, Lane is reminded of his love for drama class and improv. "I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed stuff like this, how fun it was to step outside myself."

After a trip to Starbucks in Whitney to get butterbeer lattes with Sadie, Nick, Charlie and Marina, Lane realizes how much he's missed by being focused on the future rather than living in the present.  "I'd always told myself that there was plenty of time to goof around later, after I'd gotten into Stanford. But if the past month had taught me anything, it was that the life you plan isn't the life that happens to you."

After a month of being at Latham, Lane notices that his facebook is dead, no comments, no contact from his friends. He's missed his high school's homecoming dance, something Lane has always skipped. Because he's a senior, there will be no more homecoming dances - he's missed all of them which he now regrets. He also sees that his ex, Hannah has moved on and is now dating another guy. To Lane it feels like he is a ghost, that he's been "deleted from my old life."  Lane now admits that his life before TB was not a good life because all he did was study. He felt that life in high school wasn't important because the only thing that mattered was college. But Sadie tells him that this new life he has matters, that he's "still leaving your mark, you're just doing it somewhere else."

Lane sees the reality of his old life. "I realized then that I hadn't had a life, I'd just had a life plan. And it wasn't that I didn't still want all those things -- Stanford, summer internships, graduate school -- I just wasn't sure I'd gone about achieving them the right way." Lane decides that he doesn't want to shut out life around him when he goes through college. "I didn't want to rush through all the moments that I wouldn't know I wanted until they were gone."  At this point Lane isn't even sure he wants his old life back. He'd sacrificed drama class which he loved for AP Art History to help his application. He was determined to be the best in high school without really understanding what being in high school meant. "I'd made high school into a race toward the best college, as opposed to its own destination."

Meeting Sadie and being at Latham has changed Lane; he was "waiting for everything to be different." The announcement of a potential cure by Dr. Barons leaves Lane filled with relief. When Sadie breaks up with Lane after the death of Charlie, Lane is devastated. Lane wants Sadie to be in his life because she reminds him of who he's become at Latham and he wants to take that with him when he returns to his life. "...I liked the Latham version of me so much better than the Lane I'd been before. I wanted to be the Lane who kissed a girl in a bedsheet toga and stole internet and wore a tie to a pajama movie night. I wanted to be Sadie's Lane, not the Lane who ran the Carbon Footprint Awareness Club just so I could put "club president" on my college resume." Lane feels scared that he may not be able to be "Sadie's Lane" without her.

But in the end Lane does have to learn to live without Sadie and live in the world again. However, his experience at Latham House and with Sadie has changed him forever. He decides that he will learn to enjoy life because it's all that is left to him since he can't have what he really wants in life at this point - Sadie. His biggest lesson learned is that he focuses now on the path rather than the destination. Proof of that is when he drives home from the coffee shop, Lane takes a different route home.

In contrast to Lane, Sadie is conflicted about the cure. She is cautious in accepting the reality because of previous false claims. In a way this is a foreshadowing of what will happen to Sadie. "We were no longer incurably ill, and for so many of us that had been our defining thing for so long. It had hurt to accept what was wrong with me, but it hurt even more to have hope." For Sadie returning home doesn't hold the promise that it does for others because she believes she will be held back in school, she doesn't have her driver's license, she hasn't taken the SATs and her father is now gone from the family replaced by her mother's new boyfriend. And leaving Camp Latham means she and Lane have only a few more weeks together. Sadie's doubts she'll see Lane outside of Latham.

Sadie gradually accepts that Latham won't last forever. But when a tragic series of events leads to her being attacked and her condition worsens, Sadie decides to go for the extraordinary means of treatment - the medication for the multi-drug resistant TB which has a twenty-five percent chance of killing her. Where Lane had never accepted his mortality and his being sick from TB, Sadie has. So when the treatment doesn't work, she knows her miracle was the second chance, and not the cure others will get in three weeks time.

Schneider has crafted a very gritty and realistic portrayal of teens dealing with a life and death situation, that sometimes seems unnecessarily crass. The situation surrounding the character Charlie, while humorous almost feels this way. Charlie, is a homosexual and is caught in an embarrassing situation in his room. He's a truly wonderful character, filled with teenage angst and uncertainty. He knows he's dying and is attempting to finish as much of his music composing as he can in the little time he has left. This makes him all the more endearing. Charlie demonstrates the reality of life; that the seriously ill struggle with the same things as healthy teens do. In an attempt to soften this harsh reality, Schneider interjects much humour around the situation.

Despite the strange premise of the novel, (a fatal form of TB), Schneider's characters are realistic, diverse and interesting. The setting of the novel, while realistic for the circumstances (set in a sanitarium), feels irregular at best. The group of teens in the novel appear to have little meaningful supervision and little contact with their parents. If in fact, 280,000 cases of TDR-TB exist, as the novel states, one would like to think that the facility would have restricted access and some sort of protection preventing patients from entering the town and infecting local residents, as Sadie did with Michael. Schneider has a lengthy Authors Note that explains about tuberculosis and how she came to write a novel with such an unusual premise. Overall an excellent novel, well written, with a tragic ending. Highly recommended for fans of John Green.

Book Details:

Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider
New York: Kathering Tegen Books 2015
324 pp.

Invincible by Amy Reed

Seventeen-year-old Evie Whinsett was diagnosed with cancer a year ago - a small tumour in her left hip. Evie has Ewing's sarcoma, a type of cancer almost entirely restricted to teenagers. She had surgery to remove the tumour but then it became aggressive while she was in outpatient treatment, receiving rounds of chemotherapy every other three weeks. The soreness in her hip that existed after surgery felt different and two months ago doctors discovered the cancer had spread from her hip into her femur. Following radiation treatments, Evie suffered an accident while walking around Lake Merritt with her boyfriend, Will. Walking with a cane and in terrible pain, Evie collapsed as her left leg broke into five pieces.  Now she's back in Oakland Children's Hospital hospital struggling to cope with whatever the doctors find.

After going outside to catch some fresh air with her parents and sister Jenica, they meet with Dr. Jacobs who tells her that the prognosis is not good. Dr. Jacobs tells her that the cancer has metastasized and is now in her bone marrow which is why her leg broke. He recommends that after her broken leg heals, she go on an even more aggressive round of chemo and radiation and that she have a bone marrow transplant. All this is too much for Evie who decides, to the shock of her parents, that she will stop treatment. Over her parent's objections, Evie tells them with only a four percent chance of remission, she's done. For Evie, "...it is time to die. It's time to let everyone off the hook, let Mom and Dad get on with their lives and stop wasting all their energy on the wrong daughter."

Evie tells her two best friends in the hospital, Stella who has leukemia and Caleb who has brain cancer, that she will be going home in a few days because her cancer is terminal.  Evie first met Stella eight months ago when she was returning for her third round of chemo. Stella with her black felt hat is her best friend in their cancer world. Outside of hospital that honour belongs to Kasey Wexler-Beene whom Evie has known since kindergarten.  Telling Kasey was the hardest because she had to deal with Kasey's emotional response. The person Evie does not know how to tell is her boyfriend, Will Johnson, who is on their high school football team and who has been by her side through everything.

Evie's discharge is delayed after Will, drops his laptop on her injured leg. One day Stella, with the help of Caleb, spirits Evie out of the hospital and into her boyfriend, Cole's van. With Evie strapped down in a wheelchair in the back of the van, the three of them drive into the hills where they can see the lights of Oakland, the Bay Bridge and the San Francisco skyline. Stella gives Evie a CD of music which she tells Evie has music that is about questioning authority and "not believing blindly just because someone with power tells you something's true." She also introduces Evie to smoking pot. When Cole drops Evie and Stella off near the hospital which is in lock-down mode because they have gone missing. Nurse Moskowitz meets them and admonishes Evie for leaving and for taking the risk to Stella's health. "I don't understand how this became my fault, but I say sorry anyway. I look to Stella for some clue, but her eyes are glazed over and dim, like she used up every last ounce of strength she had in her for the trip..." Nurse Moskowitz realizes that Stella is running a high fever and tells Evie that with Stella being neutropenic (that is she has few white blood cells to fight off infection), she has no immune system.

The next day Stella visits Evie in a wheelchair and Evie realizes that despite Stella's strong personality, she appears very frail. Meanwhile Evie finds she feels stronger after her outing. "It's like last night changed something even deeper, like everything inside me has been turned upside down, or like the balance of the universe is off somehow..." However, Stella's visit ends with a terrible coughing fit and when Evie visits her the next day, she finds Stella hooked up to many machines and tubes. Stella tells Evie that her roommate has been moved down the hall which is an unspoken indication that Stella is probably dying.

Dr. Jacobs tells Evie's parents that she will be able to go home once her pain has stabilized but he wants to keep her a few more days to run tests. Inexplicably, Evie seems to be getting stronger and improving. For Evie this is shocking. "For so long, my life was on hold. Now my death is on hold, and it's just as irritating. " But while Evie is improving, Stella dies, leaving Evie unmoored and angry. Dr. Jacobs reveals that Evie's tests reveal that she is completely healthy - a miracle. Evie is discharged from hospital and sent home. But Evie's return to the land of the living is marred with anger and guilt. Cancer has changed her and she's no longer the person she was a year ago.

Discussion

Invincible is a very melodramatic novel that tackles terminal cancer, drug addiction and the emotional fallout of being a cancer survivor.  Evie's miraculous recovery seems to be a plot device for the author to explore several other issues such as identity, terminal illness, and drug addiction. 

From the day she is pronounced healthy, Evie is not happy as she struggles to discover her new identity. "I should feel something. Happy. Grateful. But I keep thinking about how the last thing Stella probably saw was a ceiling identical to this one, an empty expanse of flat, lifeless white..." When she returns home from the hospital, Evie feels she is no longer "Cancer Girl" but she doesn't know who she is. Evie's pain over Stella is so overwhelming that she no longer loves the things she did before she got sick. "Maybe Will can make me feel better. Maybe he'll take me into his arms and squeeze some joy into me. But what I really want to do is get into bed and sleep for as long as it takes for me to feel like doing all the things I used to love doing. I want to sleep until I can forget that Stella's gone."  As her family and friends try to pick up their lives and relationships with Evie once again, she resists. "I want to agree with them, but something inside me says not so fast. I'm not the girl they remember. I'm not anyone they know." In a letter she writes to Stella, Evie wonders who she now is. "If I'm not Cancer Girl, who am I exactly?" Crutches Girl? Gimpy-Leg Girl?...Everyone thinks I'm still so fragile. Don't they realize I survived? Don't they realize how tough that makes me?"

Evie struggles because she feels she has changed and that her family and friends do not recognize this. She feels people only know how to deal with her as a sick person, especially her mother, whom she describes as a helicopter parent with "her propellers buzzing." Kasey and Will are her two closest friends but she does not know how to talk with them - "...no one know what to do with me, and I don't know what to do with them."

She begins abusing Norco a drug prescribed to her for pain in her hip. When Dr. Jacob tells her he wants her weaned off the Norco, Evie decides she needs to find out where her mother is hiding the pills. Soon she is taking large quantities of pills to deaden the emotional pain she feels. During this time Evie meets a complete stranger, Marcus Lyon, who is from a wealthy family. Evie likes Marcus because he doesn't know her past and therefore doesn't view her as fragile. Her relationship with Marcus is based on shared pain and smoking pot together. But Marcus has his own demons; he's a stoner, and he cuts himself to cope with the pain of his older brother's suicide.  However, not even her relationship with Marcus is able to stop Evie's self destructive behaviour. She alienates her parents, her boyfriend Will whom she dumps, and her best friend Kasey. Evie fails all her classes and she shows up at her prom stoned and drunk. Soon even Marcus begins to recognize that Evie is not well.

Reed does a good job of portraying Evie's decline into opiate addiction and binge drinking to numb the pain she is feeling. She becomes a truly despicable character that readers have a hard time sympathizing with. In contrast to Evie, are her parents, especially her mother, who seem at a loss as to how to deal with her. Only her father seems to understand what is going on, yet he leaves her to make her own choices, believing that she needs to want to be helped. By the time Evie's parents have clued in to what's happening, it's almost too late. It is this part of the story that is troubling because most parents would likely have intervened well before this point. The fact that Evie begins to fail school and cannot seem to relate to any of her friends and appears to have undergone a serious personality change would indicate that all is not well.

Reed has populated her story with many interesting characters. Stella Hsu, an Asian girl with "beautiful black hair,,,long and straight and perfect." is sassy and quite witty. Cole who is a girl, who dresses as a boy and is Stella's devoted boyfriend, is caring. Will Johnson and Kasey are the foils to Evie, representing what she once was, a good student, a faithful friend and a positive, caring person. Marcus, despite being the person who likes to get stoned with Evie and who introduces her to magic mushrooms, is someone who has suffered but seems to be surviving. He begins to recognize that Evie is in trouble and tries to change her perspective on what is happening. "You keep acting like your invincible, but your life is falling apart. I can't stand watching you self-destruct. I love you too much. Nobody's invincible, not even you."  What we don't know is, is he too late? Although the advance descriptions of the novel suggest that Evie's problem will be dating a bad boy, Marcus is not the completely bad character he's made out to be. Marcus's problems simply exacerbate the ones Evie already has.

One of the reason's Reed is able to create realistic situations involving Evie and portray her self-destruction is that Reed herself did two stints in rehabilitation for drugs. She writes in an interview that "I didn't get high for fun like everyone else. I did it because I had to. It was the only way to keep myself from feeling all the horrible feelings that kept piling on the more I went in the wrong direction and the more I kept hurting myself. " Reed was both an alcoholic and a drug addict. After her second stint in rehab, Reed has remained clean. She's now a successful author who knows much about how life can sometimes spiral out of control.

Amy Reed is planning a second book, Unforgivable, which will be published in 2016.

Book Details:
Invincible by Amy Reed
New York: Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers      2015
325 pp.