Saturday, October 31, 2015

My Heart and Other Black Holes, by Jasmine Warga

Ever since her father was convicted of murdering a boy in her school. Aysel has lived as a social outcast.  She may not have been the killer but she bears guilt by association.  She also knows that her mother can't stand to be around her on account of the incident.  She'd frankly be better off dead.  But she can't find the courage to end her life. So she turns to a website called Smooth Passages which helps connect you with a "suicide buddy" with whom you can end it all.  And there she meets Roman.

Roman looks like a popular guy and seems to have lots of people who like him.  But since the day that his younger sister died while he was babysitting her, he hasn't been able to forgive himself.  When the two of them meet, ostensibly to plan their mutual suicide pact, they find that they have a lot in common.  And Aysel, who has never imagined that someone could ever like her, begins to doubt that she wants to go through with killing herself with him.

An interesting take on the subject of teen suicide and depression, but the story is terribly predictable.  While we are supposed to see these two as clinically depressed, the presentation of their condition makes them seem terribly self-absorbed, which makes them hard to sympathize with.  They are richly drawn, but come off as mopey and stuck on themselves.

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