Between the Bliss and Me

February 15, 2021
During the summer before college, a young woman questions what her future holds when she falls in love and learns about her dad's mental illness. Sydney Holman is planning to attend NYU in the fall despite her mom's insistence that she live at home and go to nearby Rutgers. To escape the tension, Sydney goes to stay with her wealthy paternal grandparents, who are covering her college tuition. Although she doesn't feel like she fits in with their opulent world, she's determined to enjoy herself. Through her gay best friend she meets Grayson, a gorgeous, Juilliard-bound guitar player, and immediately falls for him. Grayson may have a girlfriend, but that doesn't stop Sydney from finding ways for them to spend time together. When her grandparents reveal that her long-absent father is schizophrenic and homeless, Sydney's life is upended. She knew about his drug and alcohol problems but not his mental illness, which there's a possibility she'll inherit. She becomes set on finding him and getting some answers. Mental illness is handled with sensitivity even if the book sometimes feels heavy with teachable moments. Several secondary characters lack depth, and their actions are contrived. However, this is Sydney's story, wisely set when she's on the brink of adulthood. Her authentic dilemmas during this transitional time drive the narrative, and while her choices can be frustrating, she's all the more realistic for it. Primary characters present White. Uneven but still strongly appealing. (Fiction. 14-18)

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March 1, 2021

Gr 9 Up-In a Gilmore Girls-type standoff, white 18-year-old Sydney Holman and her mom are at odds because of the huge amount of money Sydney's grandparents gave her to attend NYU in the fall. Though Sydney respects her mother, who has worked single-handedly to provide her daughter with everything she needs, she does not understand her mother's resistance to her leaving their New Jersey home for college. She soothes her anxiety by spending a few weeks of the summer in her grandparents' luxury house by the shore. There, she encounters Grayson, who is in her friend Elliot's band and has been designated as off-limits. Though she continues to flirt with him, she accepts that they can only be friends. In order to calm herself, Sydney often imagines her father talking to her, something she has done since childhood. When she learns that what she thought was a drug addiction is actually bigger-her father has schizophrenia, self-medicates with drugs and alcohol, and has been homeless for several years-she begins to fear for her own mental health. A tragedy makes her reevaluate all of her beliefs and she is left to decide how to proceed with her future. Though this story is a slow build at first, it picks up quickly and becomes a riveting read about dealing with mental illness. The connections between the characters could have been developed more and the mother's passive-aggressiveness is irritating at times, but ultimately the portrayal of a person with schizophrenia and the lack of support for him becomes the most compelling part of this book. VERDICT Highly recommended for libraries to highlight characters with mental illness.-Karin Greenberg, Manhasset H.S., NY

Copyright 2021 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2021
Grades 9-12 Mason (The Art of Losing, 2019) introduces readers to Sydney, who, as she is preparing to go off to college, decides to go in search of her missing father, a man she barely knows and who she's recently learned has schizophrenia. As she embarks on this journey and deals with the usual trappings of being a teenager, she begins to wonder if she will inherit her father's mental illness. Sydney's imagined version of her father gives her someone to talk to; her relationship with her grandparents is based mostly in money, while her relationship with her mother is rooted in strife. Aside from some misguided homophobic comments made to establish another character's sexuality, this is a reasonably sensitive novel that examines the paradoxes of schizophrenia and the challenges of an uncertain future. Mason tops off the story with a charming romantic subplot and ties in additional secondary-character conflicts that add layers. Character dynamics and plot events will remind readers of Gilmore Girls with a slightly more serious tone.

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