Title: Four Weeks, Five People
Author: Jennifer Yu
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre: Mental Health, Young Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 384
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Year Published: 2017
Format: Hardcover (Own It)
First Line: "A few words of advice for those attending Camp Ugunduzi for the first time:"
"They're more than their problems.
Obsessive-compulsive teen Clarissa wants to get better, if only so her mother will stop asking her if she's okay.
Andrew wants to overcome his eating disorder so he can get back to his band and their dreams of becoming famous.
Film aficionado Ben would rather live in the movies than in reality.
Gorgeous and overly confident Mason things everyone is an idiot.
And Stella just doesn't want to be back for her second summer of wilderness therapy.
As the five teens get to know one another and work to overcome the various disorders that have affected their lives, they find themselves forming bonds they never thought they would, discovering new truths about themselves and actually looking forward to the future."
My Rating: 4/5
I think that this book is an important read for all youth, but I also think that it was just a case of right book wrong time for me. In another time I might have rated this book a 5/5, but it just didn't seem to click with me 100% this time when I read it. That being said, I really loved the characters and the diverse cast. I think it's important to realize with mental illness that it doesn't just have one face, gender or race. It can look different on everyone.
I also appreciated the idea that it takes time to heal and get better, it's not immediate and not all the characters in the book were magically "cured" which is something I hate.
Thanks for reading,
Sidny
I think that I explained my thoughts in the review about how this book probably would have been 5/5 stars if I had been in the right mindset. It was really promising to start but I found the potential romances to be slightly annoying. That being said I enjoyed the diversity of the characters and their illnesses. It wasn't stereotypical, as the characters were not miraculously cured. It really makes you think about the time it takes to feel better and how it isn't a forever cure in most cases.
Characters:
Adam: He broke my heart into a million pieces. I understood how he felt so helpless and how he wanted to get better but wasn't able to do the follow through because the idea of being better was amazing, but the getting there was harder than expected. I would hope with time he would be able to recover.
Stella: I think that I related to her the most. The feeling of giving up and rationalizing whether recovering is even worth it. I'm viewed often as being the most pessimistic in my friend group. Also, the way she reacted to those around her, she seemed callous but the more you got to know her the more you realized that she was too scared to become attached.
Clarissa: I was very interested in her perspective, especially since at the start of the story her OCD was influencing her life so negatively, but as I read, I was a little disappointed that it seemed her relationship with Ben is what really helped her. At the same time, I think that being around people who have similar conditions.
Ben: I was also curious about the way his emotions flowed. I was curious to see how that would pan out in the everyday world and continue to wonder about this.
Mason: This is something I think that was hard to swallow, his character flaws are actually mental illness symptoms.
Jessie: I'm not sure I agree with her tactics of breaking Stella out of her shell, but it seemed to work better for her than the hippie-dippie stuff.
Josh: I think his hippie ways kind of made me happy. He really believed in what he was doing and that it would work to help these teens.
Moments to Remember:
Final Line: "And maybe, for now, that's good enough for me."
Thanks for reading,
Sidny
