Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - Challenger Deep

Thank you to Walker Books and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

Challenger Deep was rereleased on August 6th by Walker Books this year but was originally released back in 2015. It is a captivating read about mental illness completely from the mind of young 15 year old Caden.

So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don't have any experience with bringing it back to center. All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.

This book is about a mental illness that isn't easily understood, schizophrenia. It is an illness that most people also have a different view of. So I am glad that books like Challenger Deep exist where it shares various aspects of the illness from the person who has it. All too often do we get the view from people nearby the person and that just does not show well enough how a mental illness like schizophrenia works.
It is not an own voices book however. Shusterman's friend and his son had schizophrenia as shared at the back word of the book. It does show in little things (the conversation where Caden realizes his parents suffer too for instance) but I didn't find that jarring.

'Tis the nature of a liquid horizon to feel no passage of space,' the captain said. 'But we will know as we near the trench, because there will be signs and dark portents.'

Challenger Deep shows it all. The delusions, the anxiety, the paranoia, the complete different world that Caden has created for himself. It creates a heavy read. Shusterman manages to weave a chaotic but clear image of what schizophrenia was like for Caden as we slip with him between the reality and his alternate world on the ship. It shows parallels between the alternate world and the reality. It shows his fear, his detachment from reality. Moments of clarity and moments of setback.

Caden is hospitalized throughout it and I love how the books shows the relationships he builds with the other patients, therapists and psychiatrists. No matter how often you share what it is is like, rarely do outsiders get it. It makes sense for a bonding to happen between patients, especially at this age.

It's not like I can control these feelings. It's not like I mean these thoughts. They're just there, like ugly, unwanted birthday gifts that you can't give back.

I appreciated immensely that the book touched upon how people expect you to take meds and then be 'better' and that is not how that works. Or that mental illnesses very often really can't be cured, are reoccurring and have to be managed. That is realistic world for many of us struggling with our mental health.

I do not have schizophrenia but I do have depression and anxiety and I have struggled with OCD tendencies in the past. I resonated a lot with portions of this and it was also a confronting read in that regard. Yet I will certainly recommend this book to others.

Content Warnings

penofpossibilities's review against another edition

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5.0

My heart is beating so fast right now. I just finished this book. I feel like I never needed this book but now that I've read it I need it again and again and I want to doodle over all the words so that they become unreadable to anyone else but I'd have memorised them by then and I want to thank Neil Schusterman because he knows, he knows, and I want to cry and I want everyone to read this book but also please don't read this book, please dont read this book if you know me because if you read it and you don't understand it on a very deep level then thats a good thing but I'll also know by the way you talk to me about it and that will somehow be very upsetting for me, you know, because this book is for people who know, its for people who don't understand too, but they know, they know and I have never read anything like this and while I was reading it I had all these flashbacks and I swear I dont know if I can be around people with my thoughts right now, and im sorry if you read all of this, I just didn't know what else to do because im going through many feelings rn. Ok thanks for being here haha. I hope that if you read this book and you felt it on a very deep level that you are loved.

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