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A review by hawthornejourney
Accidental by Alex Richards
5.0
I don't know where I heard about this one, or what prompted me to pick it up. Was it in one of the many issues of BookList or Kirkus that I pore over every month? I tend to avoid dark reads because my own mental health practically demands it, but morbid curiosity sometimes gets the best of me, and that was definitely the case here. It's treated as a psuedo-twist -- the book cover gives away what really happened that was "accidental," so I knew what I was getting into.
The book is dark, but it's also cute at times and plain frustrating at others (in that "ugh, this is so how people would have behaved when I was in high school" kind of way). I'm not sure who I might recommend this to, because it's one of those books that might be 'too real' for teens who've endured trauma, but it was very well written and there is hope for the main character by the end of the story.
(As an aside, I wish my high school relationship had been as healthy as Milo and Johanna's. Boundaries! Mutual respect! Apologizing when you did something wrong! All great aspects of a functional and healthy relationship.)
The book is dark, but it's also cute at times and plain frustrating at others (in that "ugh, this is so how people would have behaved when I was in high school" kind of way). I'm not sure who I might recommend this to, because it's one of those books that might be 'too real' for teens who've endured trauma, but it was very well written and there is hope for the main character by the end of the story.
(As an aside, I wish my high school relationship had been as healthy as Milo and Johanna's. Boundaries! Mutual respect! Apologizing when you did something wrong! All great aspects of a functional and healthy relationship.)