Finding Audrey - review

This story is set in the modern day - I'm not sure what state - but it's about a fourteen-year-old girl who suffers from an anxiety disorder triggered by an events that happened at school.  When we meet her, she is narrating the story - talking to the reader.  She no longer is attending school because her mental illness has so severely crippled her.  She wears sunglasses as to not make eye contact with people, and when she does have contact with people - she has panic attacks that she obviously can't control.  She is seeing a psychiatrist who is counseling her and giving her challenges - and the story goes between the family dynamics, her symptoms, and the process of her getting better.

What I liked: I like unique topics - books should cover everything, and mental illnesses can hardly be understood by those that don't have experience with it - and so most people don't take the time to learn because the illness is weird and awkward to respond too.  The explanation of her physical reactions that contradicted with her thoughts, or her thoughts that contradicted with reality - was well done.  Showing how often people want to believe you can just tough it out, or choose to be better, or control the illness by your own will - when serious illnesses as hers are not to be controlled so easily.

Andrey is seeing a psychiatrist throughout the book and one of her assignments is to document her life through video camera - and so some chapters are written like a film script.  I liked how the scenes were simply described, the characters actions, and the script - the simple style was unique and let the reader draw conclusions about what was happening without the author telling you.

What I didn't like: The story was advertised as being written by this best-selling author, so I expected a good story and instead the book was painful to get through.  The worst part was the mother character, who smooths out by the end - but it is chapter after chapter of her nagging and throwing out ridiculous scenarios that she reads in The Daily Mail.  She is often coercing her son into the latest thing she read - and the fifteen year old boy's anger is not too dramatic and not believable, while the fact that he ends up going along with what she says is also not believable.

Also, on a personal note - the mother is 38 years old.  I'm reading this crazy mother's lines and thinking.  I'm 39.  I have three kids (albeit, much younger).  If I had kids when I was 24 years old, would I sound like this?  Does anyone I know sound like this?  I know it was supposed to be a young adult book, and the author dedicated the book to her own three children whom she got some of these lines and scenarios from - but the woman was so ridiculous she wasn't believable, nor were the the reactions of the son.  My own mother has some crazy things she says and does - but it was too much - the mother was just talking to talk, and it was really obnoxious.

What I wish happened: I was also waiting the whole book to find out what actually happened to Audrey that triggered her panic attacks and got three girls expelled and why people didn't believe her at first or help her.  I wonder why this was never explained...I suppose, as the therapist said, she's bored of Tasha (the instigator of Audrey's problems at school), and those kind of girl fights can be tedious.  And, it's not what the book was about ... it was about her illness and recovery.

Best lines:  "'Mummy is going to throw the computer!' says Felix, running on to the grass and looking up in disbelieving joy.  Felix is our little brother.  He's four.  He greets most life events with disbelieving joy."

"I am owed so much laughter.  Sometimes I hope I'm building up a stockpile of missing laughs, and when I've recovered, they'll all come exploding out in one gigantic fit that lasts twenty-four hours."

My Rating: 2 of 5