MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS!!

Happy Friday, book lovers!❤. As always, welcome back to another Readers Recs segment! 📚Today, we're highlighting books that shine a light on mental health because it's okay not to be okay. 💚

October 10th marked World Mental Health Day, and I wanted to compile a list of books that represent mental health. For anyone struggling, know that you're loved, you're not alone, and there's support available.❤️

Let's get to the list!!

1. In The Wild Light by Jeff Zentner

BLURB: A poignant coming-of-age novel about two best friends whose friendship is tested when they get the opportunity to leave their impoverished small town for an elite prep school. 

Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid addiction and his Papaw is dying slowly from emphysema. Dodging drug dealers and watching out for his best friend, Delaney, is second nature. 

He's been spending his summer mowing lawns while she works at Dairy Queen. But when Delaney manages to secure both of them full rides to an elite prep school in Connecticut, Cash will have to grapple with his need to protect and love Delaney, and his love for the grandparents who saved him and the town he has to leave behind. Jeff Zentner's new novel is a beautiful examination of grief, found family, and young love.

GOODREADS RATING: 4.5/5

2. Radio Silence by Alice Oseman 

BLURB: What if everything you set yourself up to be was wrong?

Frances has always been a study machine with one goal, elite university. Nothing will stand in her way; not friends, not a guilty secret – not even the person she is on the inside.

But when Frances meets Aled, the shy genius behind her favourite podcast, she discovers a new freedom. He unlocks the door to Real Frances and for the first time she experiences true friendship, unafraid to be herself. Then the podcast goes viral and the fragile trust between them is broken.

Caught between who she was and who she longs to be, Frances’ dreams come crashing down. Suffocating with guilt, she knows that she has to confront her past...
She has to confess why Carys disappeared...

Meanwhile at uni, Aled is alone, fighting even darker secrets.

It’s only by facing up to your fears that you can overcome them. And it’s only by being your true self that you can find happiness.

Frances is going to need every bit of courage she has.

GOODREADS RATING: 4.2/5 

3. The Words We Keep by Erin Stewart 

BLURB: It's been three months since the Night on the Bathroom Floor—when Lily found her older sister Alice hurting herself. Ever since then, Lily has been desperately trying to keep things together, for herself and for her family. But now Alice is coming home from her treatment program, and it is becoming harder for Lily to ignore all of the feelings she's been trying to outrun.

Enter Micah, a new student at school with a past of his own. He was in treatment with Alice and seems determined to get Lily to process not only Alice's experience, but her own. Because Lily has secrets, too. Compulsions she can't seem to let go of and thoughts she can't drown out.

When Lily and Micah embark on an art project for school involving finding poetry in unexpected places, she realizes that it's the words she's been swallowing that desperately want to break through.

GOODREADS RATING: 4.3/5 STARS 

4. Nice Work, Nora November by Julia London

BLURB: Now that Nora is not dead, only one question remains: What does she want to do with her life?

Nora November is alive—but she wasn’t always. She was once clinically dead, having spent several minutes under water after a terrible surfing accident she doesn’t remember. What she does remember from her time in a coma is her grandfather, who passed away over a year ago. And a beautiful garden. And the most delicious tomato she ever tasted.

Now that she’s awake again her life has been cleaved in two. In the Before, Nora lived like a ghost, drowning under the weight of her parents’ expectations. In the After, she’s determined to accomplish the things she left undone before she died. Her reverse bucket list is simple: She wants to learn to cook and to be a better older sister to Lacey. She wants to quit her terrible job as a personal injury lawyer at her dad’s firm. She wants to bring Grandpa’s now-neglected garden back to life. And she wants to find the guy she met in a corner store months ago—the one she never called but never stopped thinking about.

As Nora’s attempts at a new life prove disastrous at best, her mission to fulfill her reverse bucket list leads her to a reckoning with the truth she almost hid from herself.

GOODREADS RATING: 3.9/5 STARS 

5. The Stepping Off Place by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

BLURB: It’s the summer before senior year. Reid is in the thick of Scofield High’s in-crowd thanks to her best friend, Hattie, who has been her social oxygen since middle school.

But summer is when Hattie goes to her family’s Maine island home. Instead of sitting inside for eight weeks, waiting for her to return, Reid and their friend, Sam, enter into a pact—to live it up, one party at a time.

But days before Hattie is due home, Reid finds out the shocking news that Hattie has died by suicide. Driven by a desperate need to understand what went wrong, Reid searches for answers.

In doing so, she uncovers painful secrets about the person she thought she knew better than herself. And the truth will force Reid to reexamine everything.

GOODREADS RATING: 4/5 STARS 

And with that we have come to the end of this weekend's Readers Recs segment until next time stay bookish and wonderful 📚&❤. And For anyone struggling, know that you're loved, you're not alone, and there's support available.❤️