A Really Awesome Mess by Trish Cook (review)

Adopted from China just when her parents found out they were pregnant, Emily has always felt unsure of her place in her family and the world. She responds to a cruel sexting episode by becoming anorexic and launching an online bullying campaign against the offending boy and winds up at Heartland Academy, where she meets Justin. Justin has his own problems: he hopes for more connection with his distant father, and he suffers from bouts of clinical depression. Justin and Emily alternate as narrators of this ultimately feel-good story of kids whose identity issues and behavioral responses are just a tad more intense than the norm. Their sharp-eyed, humorous insights are more intense than the norm as well, and through those insights, readers meet the members of their therapy group, who all have diverse mental health issues but who are challenged by their therapist to hold one another accountable in order to achieve the perk of going to the state fair. Snappish and cranky, the teens tweak each other as much as they come to depend on each other, and their adventures at the fair are a hilarious cross between Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, and City Slickers. In fact, this novel could become a John Hughes film, with the witty snark bleeding over into pathos just often enough to be emotionally compelling as both Emily and Justin reveal the pain beneath their defenses. There are messages conveyed, sure, but they're reassuring ones: that broken can be funny as well as tragic, resilience is possible, and support is where you find it, as long as the grownups don't find out. Oh, and there is also a pig-napping. What more could you want?