Friday 24 June 2016

Book ~ "My Heart and Other Black Holes" (2015) Jasmine Warga

From Goodreads ~ Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.

Aysel's parents are from Turkey and moved to the U.S. before she was born.  They split up when Aysel was about a year old and Aysel lived with her father.  When he is sent to prison, Aysel moves in with her mother and her new family, though she doesn't feel welcome.

Aysel is 16-years-old and sad and feels alone.  She decides she is going to commit suicide and finds a partner in Roman, another teenager, on an online suicide site.  As she and Roman start hanging out together, she gets to know and like him and starts to reconsider their pact and hopes that Roman feel the same way.

This is the author's first novel and despite probably not being the correct demographic (mid to late teens), I liked it.  It wasn't a happy story as Aysel and Roman were both dealing with dramatic events that had effected their lives.  I liked the writing style and it was written in first person from Aysel's perspective.  As a head's up, there is some swearing.

At the end of the book, there are resources for suicide prevention.

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