C.G. Drews's Reviews > How It Feels to Float

There's so much love to give this harrowing, yet hopeful, novel... It's the kind that absolutely stays with you, long after you turn the final page. It's about grief and loss and disassociation. It's about friends who stick by you, and friends who leave -- both things that made and broke my heart to read. Biz is the kind of character who feels things so deeply and wholly, and she's never gotten over her dad leaving. She sometimes sees him, sitting on the end of her bed, reminiscing about her babyhood. And she wants him, but she also doesn't want to feel like she's losing the plot like this? Then she kisses her best friend Grace (which turns into an awkward disaster) and a boy pulls her out of the ocean and her life beings to unravel and she can't catch the threads.

Mental illness rep is so important in YA. It's so isolating to through things like depression -- and books are here to give us this safe space to say "hey what you're feeling isn't something you have to go at alone". I feel like Biz's voice was so personal, her narration so vulnerable, it was easy to feel like you were experiencing the whole book with her. And as someone who struggles with depression myself, I just found so many scenes made me want to cry. Soooo much accuracy. I think that's the value of #ownvoices novels right here -- they understand and get it right. 

I loved the style of this, how it was all a breath and a wish of poetry, and the slow unravelling of someone losing themselves to mental illness. It's gut-wrenching and yet threaded with hope. Truly a debut I won't forget!