Fifteen year old Courtney wants to be normal like her friends. But there’s something frighteningly different about her—and it’s not just the mysterious tattoo her conspiracy-obsessed grandfather marked her with when she was a child. “Mental illness is a slippery slope,” her mother warns her. And the last thing Courtney wants to do is end up crazy and dead like her grandfather did.
But what about the tattoo? And the alien scouts who visit Courtney in her bedroom at night claiming to have shared an alliance with her grandfather? And her new friend Agatha’s apocalyptic visions? They have to be connected. Courtney has a mission: untangle her past, discover the truth, and stop the apocalypse before anyone from school finds out she’s missing.
I received an ARC for this book via NetGalley for an honest review.
I’m not big on aliens or alien abductions, but I was interested in the mental illness aspect of the blurb. Mental illness is a huge issue that has only been talked about in brief moments. The fact that it is used in literature is uplifting and makes me feel that younger generations may learn from what they read.
That said, the book was fairly interesting. There was a clear definition on who was bad and who was good. I didn’t have any problem knowing who to hate. However, I really wanted the mental illness to be more in the book. I didn’t find myself questioning whether or not the aliens were real.
That isn’t to say that this book isn’t interesting. I did take away with me the behavior of people towards the mentally ill. Courtney’s main supporters are not family. The toxic behavior of some people against Courtney, is disturbing and shows how people are seen if they don’t understand what a mentally ill person is going through.
The writing is well done. It was easy to get into and it was easy to finish. I didn’t care for the book all that much though. Again, I think it was more that I didn’t have any doubts what was going on and I don’t care for aliens. It just wasn’t my type of book, but it also wasn’t bad.
Casia's Corner 