Thank you to NetGalley and Flux Publishing for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.
“Gothic fashionista Jess is on a mission to reunite with her estranged biological mother—but is she willing to risk her new friends, cosplay championship, and even her future to do so?”
This was a mixed bag of emotions in book form for me. I will preface this by saying that I am not in foster care, I have never been in foster care, and I do not know much about the foster care system outside of what I have learned through my studies & anecdotes. That being said, I do know that each person’s experience with it is incredibly personal and different, and so I cannot speak to how “realistic” the experiences of Jess are with the foster care system, but since Lindsay is a foster alum, I am going to assume things were based on her experiences. With that, I do have experience with mental health and cosplay, as well as goth & being plus-sized, so I can comment on those aspects with a little more personal thought.
I found Jess to be incredibly overly stubborn at times, and in some serious need of therapy to discus what her mother’s mental illness really meant. I recognize that a lot of her stubbornness probably comes from self-preservation, and just being a teenager, it was still frustrating to read someone who was so adamantly rejecting all support and logical alternatives to her self-imposed isolation. I had some issue with Jess’s understanding of her mother’s mental illness, which I will put in its own spoiler paragraph.
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Since her mother has schizophrenia, and there is a genetic link to this, it is understandable that Jess would be concerned about also developing schizophrenia due to her trauma and experiences. However, without any of the actual mental health treatment or knowledge that she so clearly needed to just cope with her existence as a foster kid, let alone with everything else, she was making really bad decisions and compounding her trauma in the name of mental health preservation. I know that this is a much more complex issue than just access to services, and being in the foster care system compounds everything, but she needed to have a better knowledge grasp of mental health, because for a long time in the book it was promoting really negative views of mental health. It did redeem itself in the end and really turned a bright side to the mental health conversation, but it took till the end.
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I appreciated all of the LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC representation, plus the diversity of body sizes being normalized. There was clear evidence of trying to make this a representative book for people while still telling this person’s story. It might not have been exactly my style of book, but I love Edgar Allan Poe, I love all the gothic stuff, and I’m plus-size, so I had a good time. I think this book will be great for those who have been in the foster care system, and I am really glad this book exists. 3.5/5
Book Blurb
Bounced between foster homes since the age of seven, Jessica knows better than to set down roots. Most of the kids at her new Michigan high school think she’s a witch anyway (because, you know, goth). The only one who gives her the time of day is geeky Oscar, who wants to recruit her fashion skills for his amateur cosplay group. But Jess is fine showing off her looks to her Insta fans—until a woman claiming to be her biological mother barges into her DMs.
Jess was claimed by the state when her bio mom’s mental illness made her unstable. While their relationship is far from traditional, blood ties are hard to break. There’s only one problem: Jess can’t reunite with her mom in New York City without a bunch of paperwork and she worries her social worker will never approve the trip. That’s when she remembers Oscar’s cosplay group, who are aiming for that big convention in New York… So, Jess joins Oscar’s team—with every intention of using them to get to her mom. But her plan gets complicated when she discovers that, actually, cosplay is pretty great, and so is having friends. And Oscar, who Jess thought was just a shy nerd, can be as gallant and charming as the heroes he pretends to be. As the big convention draws near, Jess will have to decide whether or not chasing a dream of “family” is worth risking the family she’s built for herself own doubts and old loyalties pull her back into harm’s way.
About the author
Lindsay S. Zrull is a former foster teen. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science and earned a second Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Harvard Extension. She currently works as Curator of Astronomical Photographs for the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. You can follow her on: Twitter @LSZrull, Instagram @LSZrull