A Tragic Kind of Wonderful – Eric Lindstrom – Poppy – Published 7 February 2017
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Synopsis
For sixteen-year-old Mel Hannigan, bipolar disorder makes life unpredictable. Her latest struggle is balancing her growing feelings in a new relationship with her instinct to keep everyone at arm’s length. And when a former friend confronts Mel with the truth about the way their relationship ended, deeply buried secrets threaten to come out and upend her shaky equilibrium.
As the walls of Mel’s compartmentalized world crumble, she fears the worst–that her friends will abandon her if they learn the truth about what she’s been hiding. Can Mel bring herself to risk everything to find out?
My thoughts
A Tragic Kind of Wonderful was a must read for me after I read and absolutely adored Eric Lindstrom’s first book Not If I See You First. As a result, I went into reading A Tragic Kind of Wonderful with a mix of trepidation and excitement – could it possibly live up to Not If I See You First, would it be different??
And it is different in a way, but it carries that same incredible power. I’m not sure how he does it, but Eric Lindstrom has a knack for understanding the psyche of teenage girls and bringing that to the page.
Mel Hannigan has everything under control. No one outside her family and doctors know about her having bipolar disorder, she balances her meds, keeps track of her cycling and segments her life so her friends will never find out. But when old friends question her over how their friendship ended, a new relationship sparks and her moods start cycling faster, Mel may have to confront her past.
