Mental Health Roundup

The only way out is through... together

Jun 28, 2024

Not as aligned as my panic attack roundup from last year, but just as heartwrenching of picks: this week we’re reading about characters in crisis, with a variety of on-page mental health scares explored with empathy and care by the authors. And they all happen to also be equal parts laugh out loud funny and devastatingly vulnerable.

After reading this newsletter and these books, if you’re hankering for more amusing if serious mental health explorations, might I suggest my short film Ace and Anxious on YouTube (which I wrote during a phase of my life where I was experiencing like two panic attacks per week)? I might!

Reminder: any paid subscribers to this humble romance newsletter at the end of June will be entered to win a signed paperback ARC of my forthcoming debut novel! You just need to be subscribed before the end of June 2024 for at least one month of paid posts (and they’re super fin! This month I wrote an essay about how Ali Hazelwood’s omegaverse-inspired novel is actually a metaphor for asexuality!)

Never Say Never To An Earl by Grace Callaway. I always find historical depictions of mental health fascinating -— taking modern understandings of the mind with the understandable confusion and fear of the past. In this, Sinjin Pelham, Earl of who cares, is bipolar without the vocabulary to explain what that is, and just assumes something is deeply, irrevocably wrong with him. It doesn’t help that he’s been accused of a crime he can’t remember, and given his opinion of himself, he can’t quite insist on his own innocence.

Enter: Polly Kent, youngest of the alarmingly successful Kents (born in small town country poverty, now married almost exclusively to titled spouses), innocent wallflower with a secret of her own: she can literally see people’s emotions as auras after a head injury as a child. Magical realism, synesthesia, heightened observational skills explained in a flowery way? It’s hard to say, especially since (spoiler alert) she hits her head again at the end of the book and it goes away entirely? That’s honestly the part of the book that I had the hardest time with. I would have been fine if Polly was simply freakishly perceptive (historical romance gender swapped Psych, anyone?!) which would still plague Sinjin while he tries to keep his “madness” to himself.

This is a Grace Callaway book so you know you’re in for a mystery, a murder, and more sex than seems possible for a historical romance, so I’m not going to belabor that stuff. This is the mental health roundup! And I just wanted to say I was incredibly satisfied with the resolution: without medication, bipolar disorder is TOUGH. And as with a lot of mental illnesses, it can’t really be “cured” by the love of a good woman or anything, and I appreciated we didn’t end like that. I think some people from outside of romance misinterpret the HEA requirement with “and everything is fine” but we know that’s just not true! HEA just means that the primary relationship is strong and successful, but life is still complicated and not everything can be saved to our satisfaction. For mental health romances, this is incredibly important, and I’m glad that the solution here was Sinjin getting support and understanding so even when he was having a depressive episode he wasn’t left alone or judged. Even without her aura powers, Polly is a steady, stronger-than-she-appears match for him, and I liked how this all worked out.

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

At First Spite by Olivia Dade. Olivia Dade’s latest has been hyped for months with fake AITA posts and, friends, she DELIVERED. Holy cow was this book a book I desperately needed in my life. We’ve got a “flighty” jilted woman in Athena Greydon, who unfortunately quit her job and purchased a home as a wedding gift for her fiance right before he breaks up with her and cancels the wedding. The worst part is that the home she purchased is the famous “spite house,” a bizarrely thin building built mere feet away from the two houses surrounding it (there’s some fun history about the house I won’t be delving into) because her ex fiance always wanted to expand his home, on one side, into that property and make both properties a singular normal sized one.

The other worst part is that, opposite her ex fiance neighbor is her OTHER neighbor, his older brother who vocally disapproved of her and their relationship and absolutely caused the breakup. Doctor Matthew Vine of COURSE didn’t realize she’d bought the spite house or that she’d heard him cast dispersions, but… well, it wouldn’t be an interesting romance otherwise!

Athena lashes out in a series of increasingly hilarious ways, including blasting monster porn audio books out her window directly into his house (though their neighbors can hear too, and get extremely invested in it) while she tries to figure out what to do next now that her savings are depleted and she’s confronted with her heartbreak every time she glances out her new windows. And Matthew…. Takes it. He knows he wasn’t wrong that she and his brother weren’t a good fit, but he also knows he wronged her, and he deserves this spite.

Until… she stops all of it. Until… he starts to get worried when no one’s heard from her in a while and she hasn’t left her house in a week. And this is when the book really kicks into gear. There’s truly so much to go but I don’t really want to get into it, I think you need to read it for yourself. But I will say as a depressed person, this book rang true, and I am extremely grateful to Olivia Dade for writing such an unflinchingly honest depiction of what this can look like. I am also grateful to have a Matthew of my own.

This book was lovely, funny, ridiculous, devastating, and everything I’ve come to expect from Olivia Dade.

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥

How To End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang. At long last, instead of just reminding you all that I’m only writing this newsletter because Yulin wrote a series of Instagram stories two years ago of her favorite recent reads that I then bought and read myself, I get to finally recommend her debut! I’ve been a fan of Yulin’s since we were both making web series and short films around the same time, and so I suspected I’d enjoy her take on romance since I have in the past. I did not anticipate how much I’d enjoy it.

But of course I would! This book is catnip for me! It’s got a TV writer and a fantasy novelist who are united by a shared high school trauma and reunited a decade afterwards in the writer’s room for the TV show adaptation of her book! The hero has panic attacks, the heroine is misconstrued as judgemental and standoffish when she’s actually just anxious and awkward! THIS BOOK!

Let’s back up. In high school, Helen’s younger sister committed suicide by running into traffic. Grant was driving the car she dove in front of. Helen was editor in chief of their high school newspaper, Grant was the homecoming king, so while they didn’t talk much while classmates, after this incident they definitely didn’t talk. But now it’s ten years later, they’re shoved together in the writer’s room, and they have to learn to get along for both of their careers… and their sanity.

What follows is a lovely exploration of preconceived notions, grief, closure (and the frequent lack of it), parental pressure, and how you must confront the past if you want to have a future, even when it seems unbearable.

Rating: 5/5

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥

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Next week, I’ll be breaking out of brains and into the world of scandalous women and the stodgy men who love them against their (alleged) best interests!

Don’t forget to save my upcoming debut romance, Rehabbing the Billionaire, on Goodreads! Pre-order your copy on Amazon, or mark your calendar for August 1st to snag it on Kindle Unlimited or paperback!