Deb Caletti, YA author of The Queen of Everything and Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, has  a new book being released on Monday called Essential Maps for the Lost.

The story starts with Mads (which, to me, is the worst name in history and bothered me throughout the book) who during her usual morning swim finds the dead body of a local woman in the water. This moment, she knows, will haunt her forever. She becomes obsessed with finding out who this woman was and what drove her to end her life by jumping off of a bridge into the water. This leads her to Billy, the son of the woman whose body she discovered. Billy Youngwolf Floyd now lives with his surly grandmother following his mother’s death and he is struggling to find his way through each day under the shadow of his grief. He tries to escape reality by immersing himself in the story of one of his favorite childhood books, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which makes him an odd character.

This book is a touching look at many things, including mental illness. The narrative alternates between Mads and Billy and doesn’t shy away from featuring a very important theme in the novel: emotion, and its expression (or lack thereof). Fans of Deb Caletti will enjoy this book, even if it is a little bit different from her previous ones.

This entry was posted on April 2, 2016 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Adult Readers Advisory. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.