A review by ihateprozac
Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

4.0

Lowkey mad that I wasn’t into contemporary stories as a younger teen because this would’ve helped me process my issues wih my family so much quicker.

This book *so* perfectly captures those teenage feelings of insecurity about whether your friends like you, and whether they’d even notice if you disappeared. Francesca struggles with her sense of self versus how she’s perceived by others, and that disparity between the two is teenagehood in a fucking nutshell.

This book also accurately captures the struggle of having a parent with depression. The kids are expected to parent themselves, yet neither parent trusts that they’re old enough to know the truth about what’s happening. There’s such a feeling of frustration and impotence that I can personally relate to, and Melina Marchetta captures that *perfectly* - right down to the fights with the stoic, emotionally unintelligent, and often absent father.

Highkey think that Will is an absolute dickhead though, so that arc can get in the bin.