Some Kind of Happiness

A young girl who suffers with anxiety/depression/possibly on the spectrum, is sent to her grandmothers, who she has never met as they have been no contact, for the summer as her parents are getting divorced.

Her grandmother is a MASSIVE dictator- she is severely strict and forces her granddaughter to do what she’s told.
Her grandfather isn’t much better, at one point when he catches her playing with the neighbors kids whom they labelled as white trash, he goes to hit her.
And then you’re told, “family is family” - fuck that shit.
This poor kid is controlled, gaslit, lied to.

The only positive of this story was the sweet interactions between her and her cousins - it captured the magic of youth and summers spent playing and making show more up fantastical games well.

Also, this is NOT a fantasy book. It’s just a book about really dysfunctional & relationships toxic families. I would not recommend this to middle graders. show less

Can I give this book 10 stars? This makes me want to go back and change my review system so that there's something higher than every other book that I've rated as a 5 this year, because that's how much this story affected me. Some Kind of Happiness was one of the toughest books I've read this year. Although the story was absolutely breathtaking, I kept having to put it down and take a breather. It's not easy to read about yourself in a book. To find that the author understands what you're going through so intimately that you feel like your insides are being exposed to the world. I felt for Finley, I loved Finley, because I was Finley, and that made me feel raw.

I know that you're probably all tired of hearing my spiel on how amazing the show more world of Middle Grade books can be. It's something that I say a lot, but the truth of the matter is that it hasn't gotten any less accurate as a statement. Claire Legrand could have chosen to write an adult book about depression and anxiety. She could have chosen to write a Young Adult book. Somehow though, they wouldn't have worked as well as Finley's story does. Seeing a 10 year old girl who is dealing with these feelings, who feels like she has to lock them up inside so that no one knows she's broken, just hits home so damn hard. I don't know if I ever felt like Finley when I was 10, or if I just ignored it because it wasn't "normal", or if I just blocked it out of my memory. What I do know is that now, even as an adult, I can see myself as that 10 year old girl. Struggling with the blue days, trying to motivate myself to get up and do the things that you're supposed to do. It's all the more real because she's so young, and not afraid to be honest with the reader.

There's this gorgeous balance here between fantasy and reality. Much like we escape into our books to forget the world, Finley escapes into her writing about the Everwood. These excerpts from Finley's writing, the moments when she would stop talking about herself and start talking about the "orphan queen" just stuck with me. To deal with the emotions, to deal with the pain, she poured all of that into her alter ego. Into her fiction. I read a lot of Fantasy to this day, for that very reason. To hide in another world. To find myself in someone else for a while so that I can stop being me. Claire Legrand's character was so rich, so honest, so real, that she had my whole heart this entire novel. She ripped it to shreds, and pasted it back together. I sobbed, I sniffled, and I kept reading because sometimes you need that.

I guess this isn't really a review anymore at this point. It's more me letting you know that this book has become deeply personal to me. It's well-written, yes. Claire Legrand has a way with words that is hard to explain. It's also full of all kinds of people who are real people. Flawed, liars, secret-keepers, with pasted on smiles to make other people feel comfortable. Structurally this book is fairly perfect, but that's not what I was focusing on. It was the emotion poured into this book. It was the characters who I understood on such a deep level that it was like I was right there with them. It was the moments of lighthearted childhood, mixed in with the blue days and the sadness. It's like this book was written just for me.

It'll be a long time before I'm able to read this again, but that's okay. I think it's burned into my memory and it's not going anywhere. Finley is a part of me, and I'm a part of her, and I wouldn't have it any other way. show less

I liked the author's perspective and representation of mental illness, especially in someone who is coming to realize what it is for themselves. To see that journey of self-discovery was beautiful and engaging. That being said, parts of the book were rather slow and made the book harder to get into. Not until the very end did I feel like I couldn't put it down.

This book was pretty damn good. It was originally suggested from a list of books dealing with mental illness. (Depression, for this one.) I don’t know if this book does much to address that but it does an excellent job of storytelling otherwise. The writing is the real star of the show here.

It reminded me of We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, which I liked very much, with a little Bridge to Terabithia thrown in. I like the idea of there being some kind of family secret and only the kids can uncover it because they lack the prejudices or social stigmas of adults. They’re smart enough to ignore the “don’t associate with those people” rule. I love those books where the kids are heroes and the adults are the screw-ups.

The main show more character has this world she escapes to because she has depression and anxiety. But when she goes to her grandparents, and interacts with her cousins for the first time, they all get into the world, and suddenly they have a reason to play together. But this doesn’t help the broken-ness, the blue days, the panic attacks. She’s got to deal with them while fending off Grandma’s desire to keep up appearances, developing a crush on the neighbor boy, and idolizing the cool older cousin.

It may not help with your depression or give you much insight into it–the mental illness isn’t really part of the plot, it’s more a tacked on part of the character–but that doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy this. show less

Finley is sent to live with her grandparents for the summer because her parents are having problems. What they don’t know is that Finley is hiding her own depression, as well as her extensive fantasy life played out by the creation of a fantasy world. As her fantasy world merges with the woods behind her grandparents’ house, and she draws her cousins into that world, old family secrets rise up and might destroy her. I’d give it to a preteen/young teen reader.

It's been a while since I stayed up late to finish a book.

It's been a while since a middle grade book made me feel so many things so deeply.

It's been a while since a book made me want to shove it into the hands of everyone I meet and say, "This one. Read this one."

I'll maybe write a full review later. But as my first impression after just finishing it: wow. This is a good one.

Finley Hart is sad. She is sad and downhearted about a lot of things, including the fact that she is being forced by her parents to spend the summer at Hart House, with grandparents and cousins whom she has never even met, while her parents try to “work things out”. To escape, she retreats into the Everwood, a forest kingdom fantasy world that she is creating in her notebooks. Soon after Finley arrives at her grandparents’ house, however, fantasy and reality collide as she discovers the huge forest behind their house is strangely a lot like her fictional Everwood. Even though she and her cousins are forbidden by their grandparents to go in the forest, they discover that it is in trouble and holds long-kept, upsetting family show more secrets. Is she able to discover the truth, save Everwood, her family, and herself? Alternating between reality and fantasy, this is compelling reading for older tweens.

Sharyn H. / Marathon County Public Library
Find this book in our library catalog.

show less