We Are All So Good at Smiling
ByPublisher Description
They Both Die at the End meets The Bell Jar in this haunting, beautiful young adult novel-in-verse about clinical depression and healing from trauma, from National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride.
Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. And when Faerry and his family move to the same street, the two start to realize that their lifelines may have twined and untwined many times before.
They are both terrified of the forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane.
The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers to the part of Faerry he feels is missing. They discover the Forest holds monsters, fairy tales, and pain that they have both been running from for 11 years.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities757 Reviews
Emi🌸S
Created 1 day ago
“Written in the form of notes in a journal - poems, lists, short diary entries - we are taken on a fairytale-like journey inspired by the author's personal experience through clinical depression.
These are elements that I annotated as I started reading:
🍂 Poetic, sometimes too cliché but permissible as a YA story.
🍂 Magical, the perspective of a soul looking beyond the mundane of the world, aptly named Whimsy.
🍂 Heartbreaking, when you're a young person trying to make sense of the world, finding that your answers are not acceptable to the adults around you.
🍂 Heartbreaking when you feel like no one was there when you really needed to be seen and reassured.
🍂 Grief, when you feel like you're suffering alone and no one understands, eliciting an insurmountable amount of guilt and shame.
🍂 Sprinkles of lovely folklore throughout, like that owls appear to lead us when we can't see.
Unfortunately, I found nothing particularly special about the author's narration, which I usually appreciate. And maybe it's just the difference that a voice actor makes, providing the reader with distinct voices for each character.
I also felt like too much of the story was read with exaggerated pauses usually reserved for poems. When I finally decided to pull up a pdf sample to see if the entire book was actually written in poetic prose on paper, it turned out to be the case, and that explained that.
I can absolutely appreciate the creativity of writing a story in this way - it's freeing as a creative and as a writer, but admitingly confusing without the visual. The audio format also failed to provide the trigger warnings that were present right at the beginning on the written format.
All in all, an interesting, creative way of expressing these tough, and often isolating experiences. I'm glad this book exists as a way to help others feel less alone.
🧜🏿♀️✨️”bethandherbooks
Created 1 day agoMicheleLikesBooks
Created 4 days ago
“What a creative way to speak on the grips of clinical depression!
Whimsy and Fae are teens battling the darkness of depression, but the story is wise. The use of fairy tales from around the world create a mystical, unique world. Their tales metaphorically show light through darkness, and hope through despair.
We Are All So Good At Smiling walks through a deep dark forest of depression, panic, grief, racism, and so many other hardships in life. It’s a quick, worthy listen (3 hours & 45 minutes if listened to at 1x speed) for anyone who is battling depression or for those who know someone who is battling depression.
The setting descriptions are beautifully written. The emotional descriptions evoke feeling, and the personal relationships feel real.
I deducted a star because I wished it were longer. That’s my only complaint!”Jessica Flores
Created 5 days ago
About Amber McBride
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