The Thing With Feathers

The Thing With Feathers by McCall Hoyle, 276 pages

Emilie has been homeschooled most of her life.  Since she was diagnosed with epilepsy, she has been afraid to be around people very much, or to do anything that might trigger a seizure.  Since her father died of cancer, she has been even more reluctant to interact with other people.  Her mother and therapist have agreed that she needs to go to be more involved so now she is attending public high school.  If she’s being forced to try and be normal, she wants the chance to just be normal, so she doesn’t want to tell anyone about her seizures.  This becomes complicated as she starts to make friends, and possibly even a boyfriend.  She knows she can’t keep the secret forever, but is afraid of telling people the truth.  This is a great realistic story about growing up and navigating the emotional waters of high school life.

100 Sideways Miles

100 Sideways Miles by Andrew Smith, 277 pages

Finn is an epileptic and has been since an accident involving a falling horse, which killed his mother and broke his back.  The resulting surgery left him with an odd scar on his back which he tries to avoid having people see, especially since his father wrote a science fiction book about aliens that look like angels, but have the same scars because of having their wings removed.  These aliens feast on humans and one of them just happens to be named Finn.  Finn’s best friend is named Cade and the two of them do almost everything together.  When Finn gets a girlfriend, Julia, his life should be nearly perfect, but, of course, it’s not.  This is actually a very funny story about an everyday teen, just trying to get by.  Teens who like humorous real life stories will enjoy this.