Early in October-which is coming quicker than the weather is changing here in the Northeast — we recognize Mental Illness Awareness Week. I don’t believe we need a specific time to acknowledge mental health and raise awareness for mental illness but if we are setting aside a week dedicated to it, then we should also highlight the books that have excellent mental health representation as well. Adrienne Tooley chose to spotlight her favorite YA books that explore mental health and I think these books definitely deserve to be recommended and read.
So, what are Adrienne Tooley’s three favorite YA books that explore mental health?
In setting out to write my first duology, I knew I wanted to write about the duality of emotions—most specifically: sadness and anger. Book one in the duology, The Third Daughter, centers around Sabine, a girl filled with a personified “darkness” that fed on her sadness. A girl whose tears were magic. These tears set off a chain of events that require Sabine to team up with Elodie, a princess, to undo the sleeping spell that holds the Queen of Velle in its unwakeable grip. Along the way, the girls learn the truth about a century old prophecy, the corruption that runs deep in their country, and fall in love.
Book two, The Second Son (available now!) explores what happens when sadness has been depleted and anger comes into play. Now Elodie and Sabine must contend with a mysterious prophet set on overthrowing their positions of power and trying to ruin their relationship in the process. The book is an exploration of female rage, what it means to be an angry woman and how men use anger as a shield to avoid facing their other emotions.
You can probably tell by now that emotions and mental health are deeply important topics to me. I want to share three of my favorite young adult novels that deal with the complex topic of mental health with the respect, reverence, and nuance it deserves.
If Tomorrow Doesn’t Come by Jen St. Jude
I’ve read this book upwards of ten times and the ending has never failed to make me sob uncontrollably. St. Jude creates a world with a ticking clock—on the day Avery Byrne plans to take her own life she learns an asteroid is heading for earth. The world has eleven days left, and Avery has to decide if those final days are worth living. Richly layered with introspection, complicated family dynamics, friendship, love, and sapphic yearning, this book is a gift, one infused with desperation, grief, and ultimately hope.
We Are All So Good at Smiling by Amber McBride
A captivating novel in verse, this book straddles the line between real life and fairy tale. While in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression, Whimsy meets Faerry, a boy whose life becomes impossibly entangled with her own. McBride toes the line between reality and fantasy with conviction, finding ways to describe very real emotions with haunting, magical lyricism. Yet this duality does not make the situations any less real or resonant. Instead, this book wraps the reader up like a hug, leaving behind a strange, wonderous haze and the feeling of truly being seen.
Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour
Everything Nina LaCour writes is special, and this book might be one of my very favorites. When Mila ages out of the foster care system she takes a job at a farm on the Northern California coast. There she finds comfort and belonging with the students and others on the farm. But here, deals with the ghosts of her past. As Mila grapples with her memories, she begins to truly face the trauma she carries with her. More speculative than her other novels, I love LaCour’s gentle, whimsical writing and the way Mila’s story spills out across the page, allowing her a place to heal, a found family who support her, and ultimately, like all the books on this list, not a happy ending, but a hopeful one.
The Second Son is available now in hardcover, e-book and audiobook.
Adrienne Tooley author photo credit Sylvie Rosokoff. Featured image designed by Jon Negroni. Read more articles by Brianna Robinson here.
Brianna Robinson is a book publicist and Sarah Lawrence College alum. She lives in New York with too many books and two enthusiastic dachshunds. You can find her on twitter @blrobins2.
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