Teens have ups and downs. But what 16-year-old Mel Hannigan has are no typical hormone-fueled mood swings. ("Trying to learn Portuguese overnight isn't a mood. It's someone else jumping into my head and grabbing the controls.") She suffers from a serious form of bipolar disorder that cycles rapidly through highs and lows. Heavily medicated after a brutal few years during which her brother died, her parents divorced, she and her mom moved south of San Francisco and she lost her two new best friends, Mel believes that her superpower is "the ability to not think about anything I don't want to think about." But when the grandson of a new resident at the nursing home where she works enters her life with an unflinching interest in her, Mel begins to question the sustainability of her denial-based approach to friendships. And when her former best friends reappear in her life, reminding her of raw memories, it becomes clear Mel needs to find a new superpower: "I've always thought I had the strength to avoid thinking about painful things. What if I actually can't think about them because I lack the strength?"
A Tragic Kind of Wonderful by Eric Lindstrom (Not If I See You First) is the funny and heartbreaking portrait of a hugely likable teen struggling to find her authentic self in a muddle of medication and mental illness. This beautiful, nuanced novel will speak to those who suffer from bipolar disorder, as well as to anyone who doubts they are worthy of love just the way they are. --Emilie Coulter, freelance writer and editor