According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place—and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head—and her home state—and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.
Zander does not fit in—or so she thinks. She has only one word for her fellow campers: crazy. In fact, the whole camp population exists somewhere between disaster and diagnosis. There’s her cabinmate Cassie, a self-described manic-depressive-bipolar-anorexic. Grover Cleveland (yes, like the president), a cute but confrontational boy who expects to be schizophrenic someday, odds being what they are. And Bek, a charmingly confounding pathological liar.
But amid group “share-apy” sessions and forbidden late-night outings, unlikely friendships form, and as the Michigan summer heats up, the four teens begin to reveal their tragic secrets. Zander finds herself inextricably drawn to Grover’s earnest charms, and she begins to wonder if she could be happy. But first she must come completely unraveled to have any hope of putting herself back together again.
A book, about teens with various mental illnesses at summer camp. I know, it sounds odd, but if you strip all that away, you have a lovely story of friendship, first love, and healing.
This was a fairly funny book about unfunny things (sort of like Me and Earl and the Dying Girl). The characters were quirky and there was a lot of funny banter. Crane did a commendable job of slowing unraveling her characters. I loved collecting all the pieces to assemble the full picture of each character's circumstance. I found a lot of the story very honest as well. There was a lot of really heartbreaking stuff, and that idea that you could let it break you or you could trust and preserve is quite a strong message. I would not say there was no foreshadowing to the ending, however, I still loved it, and greatly enjoyed all the parts leading up to it.
Overall: great read. An engaging story with lots of humor and heart filled with characters I grew to care about.
