Highly Illogical Behavior

“He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing.”

Its been quite a while since I read a book in a day. This book was just so addicting.

I don't suffer from bad agoraphobia, I can leave the house but only if all my skin if covered and only if its not too sunny (I live Australia so its always sunny)
If I don't cover my skin, or if its too sunny, I'll be inconsolable. I have to cancel doctors appointments all the time because the sun is out. My fear of the sun is keeping me inside.
Ive been diagnosed with agoraphobia, and I have been getting worse with it, but I don't have it a bad as some do, like Solomon from this book.

Après plusieurs lectures presque exclusivement en français, j'avais envie de reprendre mon rythme où j'alterne les livres en français et ceux en anglais. J'ai choisi ce roman young adult de John Corey Whaley, un auteur américain que je n'avais jamais lu auparavant. J'avais découvert ce livre il y a peu de temps sur Goodreads et le résumé m'avait tout de suite donné envie de le lire :

Sixteen-year-old Solomon has agoraphobia. He hasn't left his house in 3 years. Ambitious Lisa is desperate to get into a top-tier psychology program. And so when Lisa learns about Solomon, she decides to befriend him, cure him, and then write about it for her college application. To earn Solomon's trust, she introduces him to her boyfriend Clark, and starts to reveal her own secrets. But what started as an experiment leads to a real friendship, with all three growing close. But when the truth comes out, what erupts could destroy them all. Funny and heartwarming, Highly Illogical Behavior is a fascinating exploration of what makes us tick, and how the connections between us may be the most important things of all.

It was the thing they had most in common—all they wanted was a quiet place to be invisible and pretend the world away. And that's exactly what they had before things got weird. Now, no matter what they told themselves or each other, it would always be different. After all, no first love goes away overnight, especially one that's always right in front of you, but just out of your reach.

I'll never forget that day at the fountain. The other kids laughed and whispered, even when the principal had gotten him out of the water and wrapped a jacket around him. They just kept laughing and pointing as he walked by, dripping wet and never looking up from the ground. Most everyone I knew heard some ridiculous gossip about him by the end of that day. But then, within weeks, it was like he'd never existed. And that's when I got the saddest. They never brought him up again. Like we belonged there and he belonged somewhere else. It's not too hard to disappear when no one's looking for you. That's what we do sometimes. We let people disappear. We want them to. If everyone just stays quiet and out of the way, then the rest of us can pretend everything's fine. But everything is not fine. Not as long as people like Solomon have to hide. We have to learn to share the world with them.

Actual Rating: 3.75Reading Highly Illogical Behavior had me really stepping out of my comfort zone. I don't tend to gravitate towards contemporary novels, and especially not towards contemporary novels dealing with mental illness. In fact, the only other novel I've read on the topic was [b:It's Kind of a Funny Story 248704 It's Kind of a Funny Story Ned Vizzini https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1420629730s/248704.jpg 240980] by Ned Vizzini. To my surprise, I ended up liking this book.Before I get into the novel itself, I just wanted to make a few quick comments about the audiobook's characteristics since I listened to it rather than read it. This was interesting because there was a female narrator and a male narrator who narrated Lisa's chapters and Solomon's chapters respectively. I thought this was pretty interesting personally. With that said, I think the male narrator was much more engaging than the female narrator, however, he was not as engaging as I would have hoped. I think the audiobook for [b:Anansi Boys 2744 Anansi Boys Neil Gaiman https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1479778049s/2744.jpg 1007964] by Neil Gaiman has given me unrealistic audiobook expectations!The book itself is interesting. The plot is alright, however, this book is certainly more character-driven than plot-driven in my opinion. But I was perfectly fine with that. After all, I stayed pretty engaged throughout the novel- I was always curious to see what would happen next.I liked the characters! It was hard to say whether there was an antagonist or not due to the nature of this novel, but I was perfectly fine without there being a clear antagonist. I thought the characters were interesting and original. My only gripe was with Clarke and Lisa's relationship. Whaley kept talking about this relationship they had, but honestly I didn't see it much. And it wasn't just that they weren't sexually involved. They just didn't seem all that into each other, and yet there were dozens of lines where Solomon was going “OMG CLARKE YOU LOVE HER SOOOO MUCH”. And I was kinda like- what?Other than that it's an interesting book and I definitely recommend picking it up. It's funny, and interesting, and inspirational even at times. I'm glad that Reading Olympics dropped this “book” into my lap.

Solomon has panic attacks and an episode at school, and now he doesn't leave his home. Lisa dreams of being admitted into the country's second best psychology program and decides to try to cure Sol and use this as the basis for her admittance essay. Lisa and Sol become friends and that does help Sol. But the story doesn't end here....

This is a fine, fine story of friendship and misunderstanding and mental illness and drive, I think. It is the rare story where all the characters—Sol, Lisa, Lisa's boyfriend, Sol's parents and grandmother—all the characters are quite admirable and yet interesting, too.

So happy I finally got around to this story.

:)

Omigosh you can write your review on Amazon Kindle? I am amazed right now. Didn't realize this. Anyways, I actually really enjoyed this book. Full review to come on day...

This is a book about mental illness and even though I don't have any experience with agoraphobia and panic attacks I feel like John Corey Whaley depicts it in a very respectful way. This book had a healthy dose of seriousness with an equal amount of humor thrown in. This is told in alternating perspectives of Solomon and Lisa and I personally don't like it when books are told in multiple points of view however with that being said I feel like it works for this book. It took me forever to get into this book like over half way through I finally started getting into it. I also just didn't connect with any of the characters. Lisa just comes off a little stalkerish to me from the beginning but she did get better toward the end and Solomon and Clark are totally into all that Star Trek stuff which totally went over my head. I wish this book would have been longer I just feel like the way it ended wasn't sufficient it just needed more.