Four Weeks, Five People by Jennifer YuMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
★★★☆☆½
Wow. This book was something. It was indeed a realistic portrayal of many mental disorders. I related to the book so much because I have the diagnosis of many of these disorders and atleast one person in my family has one of the others.
This book deals with Depression, Anorexia, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a suicide attempt, and as I've learned from Emma Giordano's review (she checked in with the author because it's never stated in the book what Ben's diagnosis is), Borderline Personality Disorder.
I have OCD, BPD, and depression. I have struggled with eating disorders before. (I'm very open about mental health and believe we need to remove the "hush-hush" and the stigma so if you're sort of taken back by my willingness to be so open online/publically/in a review well...then...Hello! :)
So that is why these characters and this book could have been worthy of 4 or 5 stars for me; because every person experiences differences in their disorder and this was one of the first books to have depression shown as anger, OCD shown as obsessive thoughts more than the compulsions that people can see, and this is one of the only forms of media that I have seen that deals with BPD and so many forms of media leave out the Splitting that happens with someone who is diagnosed with BPD. And this showed it and showed it Well and Realistically! This was also one of the first forms of media that I have seen that shows a character who suffers from NPD and they aren't shown as the villian and we get an inside look at their thought process.
What took this read down to 3 1/2 stars was that there wasn't much character development, it felt rushed, and there was too much left unexplained. You go chapters without knowing some characters diagnoses but learn others at the beginning of the book. And then, like with Ben, there were diagnoses that remained unspoken.
(Then there was the fact that I was wanting an HEA for all the characters and for everyone to be getting wonderful treatment at the end and be on a better path in life, but wanting an HEA was just my own nitpicks and wishful thinking.)
The children should have been receiving better treatment however. The camp and the staff (except maybe Jessie,) doesn't seem equipped to actually deal with any of the teens problems.
I've already spoken of how important it was to have Mason, who has NPD, in the book. He's a horrible character but it's the fault of a disorder he can't help. You can see a very slight change in him for the better if you squint near the end.
Andrew, Stella and Clarissa were wonderfully fleshed out characters.
But then there's Ben. He has BPD and so do I. So maybe this is a bit (or a whole lot) of self-loathing but I could not Stand his character. Him falling in love with Clarissa and beginning to have these 500 Days of Summer daydreams about her and then SPOILER:(splitting &) suddenly hating her for not living up to His fantasies!? Ugh! Oh! Wait! That sounds like me....:END SPOILER-____-
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