A World Without You by Beth RevisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Seventeen year old Bo has always had delusions that he can travel through time. When he was ten, Bo claimed to have witnessed the Titanic hit an iceberg, and at fifteen, he found himself on a Civil War battlefield, horrified by the bodies surrounding him. So when his concerned parents send him to a school for troubled youth, Bo assumes he knows the truth: that he's actually attending Berkshire Academy, a school for kids who, like Bo, have 'superpowers.' At Berkshire, Bo falls in love with Sofia, a quiet girl with a tragic past and the superpower of invisibility. Sofia helps Bo open up in a way he never has before. In turn, Bo provides comfort to Sofia, who lost her mother and two sisters at a very young age. But even the strength of their love isn't enough to help Sofia escape her deep depression. After she commits suicide, Bo is convinced that she's not actually dead. He believes that she's stuck somewhere in time - that he somehow left her in the past, and now it's his job to save her.
A World Without You is a complex and heartbreaking read, but for me it lacked that extra bit of power that would've made it a 5-star read.
So, we've got Bo who's at a special school for teenagers with severe mental illness and behavioural challenges, only Bo believes he's actually got superpowers and that the school is a place for other people like him. Through his eyes, we meet his classmates and learn of the 'powers' he believes they have. The writing is actually incredible as even from Bo's narrative, I could tell which problems the other characters at the academy had, even though we're immersed in Bo's very distorted view of the world.
Before the book begins, Bo's girlfriend has died, and Bo spend the majority of this book believing that she's not really dead, that she's stuck in time somewhere--because the superpower he believes he has is that he can travel through time and manipulate time. It's honestly heartbreaking reading how he's 'going back in time' constantly searching for Sofia, believing he can save her--when readers know what his reality is.
The writing is also really strong and narrative style is sufficiently different between the two POV characters, Bo and his sister Phoebe. Phoebe's chapters are very different to Bo's--she's grounded in the real world and we see the impact that Bo has on her. There's a lot of discourse on the impact that mental illness has on the family unit as a whole, and we see how Bo's institutionalisation shapes Phoebe and their parents. But I did find this was a little repetitive. Beth Revis has both her narrative POV characters lament A LOT about how Phoebe and Bo's relationship is not a typical relationship. And this was starting to annoy me as I read it. Mentioning it once per narrating character--or even twice--would've done the job, but it's mentioned so much that I began to feel like it was just too repetitive. And this slowed down the pacing for me, particularly in the first two-thirds of the book.
There was also one thing that I didn't particularly like regarding the family dynamics which was made quite obvious via Phoebe's chapters--and that is how her chapters present Bo as a burden on his family. As a disabled and chronically ill reader, this was something that really disappointed me. I mean, obviously, it's just Phoebe's opinion--and she's bearing the grunt of a lot of Bo's illness in the family dynamic as she's now got to be the 'perfect' child and isn't allowed to mess up at all--but I was hoping that there'd be something later to call Phoebe out on this 'Bo is a burden' notion.
The tension develops well across the book--and although the pacing and tension doesn't really change across Phoebe's chapters, you can really see it building to the climax with Bo's. For that reason, from 70% onward, I couldn't put this book down. That's where we see the accumulation of everything: Bo's illness, his grief and refusal to admit Sofia is dead, the pressure that Phoebe's under. There were several moments near the end where my heart was in my mouth, where I couldn't truly believe that what I thought had happened had actually happened. It was heart-wrenching and exhausting to read, but in a good way.
On the whole, this book has a good depiction of mental illness, if the whole burden issue is overlooked. But it's an important read and I still rate it 4 stars because of the strength of the writing and plot.
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A World Without You is a complex and heartbreaking read, but for me it lacked that extra bit of power that would've made it a 5-star read.
So, we've got Bo who's at a special school for teenagers with severe mental illness and behavioural challenges, only Bo believes he's actually got superpowers and that the school is a place for other people like him. Through his eyes, we meet his classmates and learn of the 'powers' he believes they have. The writing is actually incredible as even from Bo's narrative, I could tell which problems the other characters at the academy had, even though we're immersed in Bo's very distorted view of the world.
Before the book begins, Bo's girlfriend has died, and Bo spend the majority of this book believing that she's not really dead, that she's stuck in time somewhere--because the superpower he believes he has is that he can travel through time and manipulate time. It's honestly heartbreaking reading how he's 'going back in time' constantly searching for Sofia, believing he can save her--when readers know what his reality is.
The writing is also really strong and narrative style is sufficiently different between the two POV characters, Bo and his sister Phoebe. Phoebe's chapters are very different to Bo's--she's grounded in the real world and we see the impact that Bo has on her. There's a lot of discourse on the impact that mental illness has on the family unit as a whole, and we see how Bo's institutionalisation shapes Phoebe and their parents. But I did find this was a little repetitive. Beth Revis has both her narrative POV characters lament A LOT about how Phoebe and Bo's relationship is not a typical relationship. And this was starting to annoy me as I read it. Mentioning it once per narrating character--or even twice--would've done the job, but it's mentioned so much that I began to feel like it was just too repetitive. And this slowed down the pacing for me, particularly in the first two-thirds of the book.
There was also one thing that I didn't particularly like regarding the family dynamics which was made quite obvious via Phoebe's chapters--and that is how her chapters present Bo as a burden on his family. As a disabled and chronically ill reader, this was something that really disappointed me. I mean, obviously, it's just Phoebe's opinion--and she's bearing the grunt of a lot of Bo's illness in the family dynamic as she's now got to be the 'perfect' child and isn't allowed to mess up at all--but I was hoping that there'd be something later to call Phoebe out on this 'Bo is a burden' notion.
The tension develops well across the book--and although the pacing and tension doesn't really change across Phoebe's chapters, you can really see it building to the climax with Bo's. For that reason, from 70% onward, I couldn't put this book down. That's where we see the accumulation of everything: Bo's illness, his grief and refusal to admit Sofia is dead, the pressure that Phoebe's under. There were several moments near the end where my heart was in my mouth, where I couldn't truly believe that what I thought had happened had actually happened. It was heart-wrenching and exhausting to read, but in a good way.
On the whole, this book has a good depiction of mental illness, if the whole burden issue is overlooked. But it's an important read and I still rate it 4 stars because of the strength of the writing and plot.
View all my reviews
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