This review was commissioned by Harper Collins.

I love books that focus on family drama; I love them way more than I love being embroiled in it in reality, that’s for sure.

We meet Maeve and Murtagh way into their relationship and go backward to the beginning; we learn about their beginnings, their peccadilloes, Maeve’s anxiety and Murtagh’s unyielding patience and desire to please her, even when she is freezing him out in a way that feels all too familiar when dealing with loved ones who suffer as Maeve does and as I myself do with sometimes crippling bouts of anxiety.

But here is the thing, for me; I do not go to books that showcase things I suffer from for entertainment, particularly not when they deal with tragic outcomes to mental illness. I just don’t. Much like Sick Lit, this is definitely for somebody but that somebody isn’t me.

I don’t want to be entertained by what I grapple with; I would be more interested in people striving to get it right when they wish to showcase it and the truth is, my anxiety doesn’t define me the way it defines Maeve. I don’t know anybody who wants it to be their defining personality characteristic; not in a world that will never understand it, particularly when it is portrayed this way.