10 Things I Can See From Here
by Carrie Mac
Maeve is utterly sick and disgusted with people’s banal response to her anxiety. She’s heard it all. “Just relax!” they say. “Calm down! Smile! It will all be okay!” Blah, blah, blah. Sure, she thinks, when there are a million ways to die and a million things that will kill you and everyone you love, you should totally just relax already. When your mother is going to Haiti for six months, where they don’t even have decent hospitals or bathrooms or food, it’s all going to be just fine. Riiiiight. When you’re getting shipped off to your recovering-user father and pregnant stepmom’s house (the pregnant stepmother who insists that she won’t go to the hospital to give birth, but wants Maeve to help), what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG?
Enter Salix. the calm, talented musician in the park whose magnetism catches Maeve off guard completely. Maeve hardly knows what to think when she’s not thinking about dying, but Salix is well worth thinking about. Anxiety does not take a break just because you’re falling in love, though, and who wants to hang out with someone who’s so wound up all the time?
Maeve, Salix, Dad, stepmother, brothers and sisters and neighbors and even bit characters are well drawn and fully realized. They all have a role to play in helping Maeve move through the challenges of first love, family trouble, loneliness and illness. This is an excellent resource, too, for the reader to begin to understand the struggles of someone who is not just nervous and depressed, but has anxiety disorder. I highly recommend this little gem of young adult realistic fiction.
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Review by Andrea Terry, Circulation Staff
