How does anyone know they’re depressed? You feel equally alive and dead and have no idea how that’s even possible. And everything around you doesn’t seem so full anymore. And you can’t tell if the world is empty or you are. That’s how I knew. I realized it wasn’t the world that was empty.
Title: Definitions of Indefinable Things
Author: Whitney Taylor
Series: Standalone
Publication: April 4th 2017 by HMH Books for Young Readers
Pages: 336
Source: Netgalley
Summary from Goodreads:
Reggie Mason is all too familiar with “the Three Stages of Depression.” She believes she’s unlocked the secret to keeping herself safe: Nobody can hurt you if you never let them in.
Reggie encounters an unexpected challenge to her misanthropy: a Twizzler-chomping, indie film-making narcissist named Snake. Snake’s presence, while reassuring, is not exactly stable—especially since his ex-girlfriend is seven months pregnant. As Reggie falls for Snake, she must decide whether it’s time to rewrite the rules that have defined her.
A List of Feelings:
- Handles depression, angst, and hard topics like teen pregnancy with a snarky, sarcastic, and refreshing voice that doesn’t drown you in it.
- Beautiful depiction of how everyone wears masks to hide themselves and their feelings despite everything else going on. Very easy to relate to this aspect of the book.
- Reggie’s voice, while almost overly sarcastic, adds new layers to the novel because of her attitude.
- It’s not an insta-love romance. It’s a romance born out of feelings – feelings that aren’t even good, but they’re feelings in a sea of nothing and that makes them important and worthy of clinging onto.
- The writing in this book reminds me of why words are so powerful. A sentence can be so simple on the surface, yet so deep within context.
- The characters are not meant to be likable, and they aren’t. You don’t like them, their choices, what they’re doing and how they are living. But you can understand them because they are so real. They grow on you, and though you never actually like them, you start to care.
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