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Summary
Summary
Norah has agoraphobia and OCD. When groceries are left on the porch, she can't step out to get them. Struggling to snag the bags with a stick, she meets Luke. He's sweet and funny, and he just caught her fishing for groceries. Because of course he did.
Norah can't leave the house, but can she let someone in? As their friendship grows deeper, Norah realizes Luke deserves a normal girl. One who can lie on the front lawn and look up at the stars. One who isn't so screwed up.
Readers themselves will fall in love with Norah in this poignant, humorous, and deeply engaging portrait of a teen struggling to find the strength to face her demons.
Author Notes
A junk food enthusiast, film nerd, and rumored pink Power Ranger, Louise Gornall writes about her own experiences to help encourage and facilitate conversations with other people also facing challenges with mental illness. She lives in England. Visit her website at www.bookishblurb.com , and follow her on Twitter at @Rock_andor_Roll.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seventeen-year-old Norah has incapacitating OCD and agoraphobia: she hasn't been outside of her home, except to see her therapist, in nearly four years. After a cute boy named Luke moves in next door and takes an interest in her, Norah manages to fight her urges to hide away, slowly befriending him and showing him who she really is, phobias and all. Norah's unease permeates the pages ("Musings, meanderings, conversations that haven't even happened run in one continuous loop around my head"), leaving readers with a deep understanding of the limitations of her conditions. While Luke's almost-too-good-to-be-true patience and persistence help spur Norah to push herself in new ways, Gornall doesn't minimize the role of therapy in the progress she makes nor the difficult work that still lies ahead for the teenager. Through Norah's poetic internal monologue, Gornall, whose own experience with mental illness helped inform Norah's story, provides an intimate glimpse into the mind of a young woman battling some very real demons. Ages 12-up. Agent: Mandy Hubbard, Emerald City Literary. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Imagine this: your groceries have been delivered to your home, because you don't go shopping. Inconveniently, they have been left just outside against the house, where they sit in the sun. If you are Norah, this is a catastrophe, since venturing out of the house alone is terrifying. Luckily, however, she gets unexpected help from Luke, the new guy next door. Normally, she wouldn't be welcoming, but Luke is interesting. When her mother ends up in the hospital, leaving her temporarily in charge of battling her demons on her own, Norah and Luke, who has his own issues, take realistic baby steps toward each other. Debut author Gornall, who based Norah's illness on her own experiences, allows readers open access to Norah's tormented mind. Describing anxiety, Norah observes, It's the brassy bitch at school that I don't like, but being her BFF makes me popular. . . . I don't know how to be safe without it. Pair this with John Corey Whaley's Highly Illogical Behavior (2016) for a complementary story about a teen boy experiencing agoraphobia.--Colson, Diane Copyright 2016 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Seventeen-year-old Norah Dean hasn't left her house in four years, and the only people she allows around her are her mother and her therapist. She has been diagnosed with agoraphobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety, and because she attends school online, she experiences life mainly via social media. Norah's tightly structured world begins to change when her new, very cute neighbor Luke spies her using a stick to pull groceries in from the porch. Romance quickly blossoms but not without setbacks. A love story set against the backdrop of debilitating mental illness, this debut novel is a poignant work, infused with humor, self-doubt, and, eventually, self-acceptance. Drawing from personal experience, the author intelligently and sensitively presents Norah's myriad emotions and her constant battle against her own mind, depicting panic attacks, stream-of-consciousness inner monologues, and more. Mature language and situations combine with the frank, realistic detail as Norah explores her first relationship and her own mental health. VERDICT Great for teens who appreciated Sophie Kinsella's Finding Audrey and Nicola Yoon's Everything, Everything.-Erin Holt, Williamson County Public Library, Franklin, TN © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Housebound with severe mental illness, a white teen fights her demons and attempts a romance with a neighbor.Seventeen-year-old Norah's high school career ended four years ago. Her illness arrived suddenly; now agoraphobia and OCD prevent her from leaving her house and direct every minute of her day and night. Her unflaggingly supportive and adoring mom home-schools her. Norah narrates her obsessive thoughts, terror, anxiety, tics, coping mechanisms, panic attacks, and losses of consciousness in a first-person voice that's vivid, tormented, sad, and funny: " I'm fine. I swear.' I twirl, because nothing says I'm mentally stable quite like an impromptu pirouette"; "I wonder if I can buy a lobotomy on eBay." Her self-awareness is believably inconsistent: she knows cutting is self-injury but won't accept that skin-scratchingwhich she does constantly, until she bleedsalso counts. She tries to date the respectful, devoted, almost-impossibly-perfect boy next door without leaving her house or touching him. She's a "tall skinny blonde with baby-blue doe eyes," but her insecurities meld into her illness. Although Norah's voice is droll, desperate, and compelling, her illness rules her plot arc as it rules her life. Disturbingly, Gornall uses a home invasion as a catalyst for Norah's out-of-the-blue progress at the end, rendering this traumatic event as not only benignleaving no emotional scarsbut productive. Excellent prose is undercut by a highly implausible ending. (author's note) (Fiction. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.