Words on Bathroom Walls by Julia Walton is a story about love and a story about mental health. Adam is in new school after a falling out at his old school. He has schizophrenia and people at his old school stigmatized him. The story is told through journal entries he writes for his psychiatrist since he refuses to talk in session. He is taking experimental meds and is starting to have hope of having a normal life some day. I thought this was beautifully written and it was interesting to read from the point of view of someone with schizophrenia.

This didn't up being a good fit for me - I have not been enjoying YA as much as I used to, so it feels unfair to criticize it for being YA

I'm crying.
And laughing.
Hugging my blanket with a disturbed smile on my face.

This book is about Adam.
Adam is a "schizo".
And Adam wishes he were Harry Potter, because when Harry heard voices, they turned out to be real.
But he isn't. And that's why whenever he thinks someone is watching him, he says to himself he must be hallucinating, because he's not interesting - why would anyone want to watch him?
And he hears train whistle all the time.
But that's okay because he likes trains.
I dare you not to love Adam.

While the story interested me and I really wanted to continue, at the time I read this, I just couldn't get through. I wanted to finish it another time, but found out that I wasn't allowed any more. I hope I get to read this book another time anyway.

Words on the Bathroom Walls is about a boy living with schizophrenia and I found it to be a realistic, heartbreaking and equally humorous in ways I wasn't expecting. Highly recommended.

I read about 15% of this book before the time ran out so I just didn't get to it in time. I did end up buying my own personal copy to read when I get the chance. Thank you for allowing me to read this book!

My students have loved this one. I only see it to check it out to another person.

First, I'll tell you that I really enjoyed this book. I'm not sure that it has the staying power of Perks of Being a Wallflower, and I certainly didn't feel it as deeply, but it's a darkly funny, poignant, clever book with a lot of heart. I'd sort of forgotten about it when I pulled it up on my Kindle, and I was hooked by the first chapter. Adam's voice brims with both earnestness and snark. I felt like I knew him instantly. I cared so much about him that it was difficult to take breaks (even for food), because I needed to know what happened next. Not in a mystery kind of way. There are no gimmicks here, no aha! moments where so-and-so is actually a hallucination, zomg. It's just a really heartfelt book about a teen struggling with a chronic, debilitating illness, and learning that he still deserves--and can have--a full life.

But it's not saccharine. Adam doesn't pull any punches. He's blunt, vulgar at times, judgmental at others. He's kind of an ass sometimes. He's also swoonily sweet at others. And he loves to bake. This complexity shines through in the other characters--which is good, because it's very character driven. Maya and Dwight, his friends, both have distinct personalities and motivations, although I wish Dwight was around more. Maya is an abrasive character who doesn't like sappy stuff, and I loved her for it. She calls him on his BS. Even the school mean boy isn't a total evil dickwad, but a believable, realistic dickwad.

Family dynamics are such a huge part of this book, and so well done. Despite having a loving mother and stepfather, Adam doubts his own worth. His brain tells him that his stepfather hates him. Thinks he's crazy (his step-grandma definitely does). He worries that he's ruining his mother's happiness. He lashes out at them, and at himself. And his mom and stepfather react like humans--imperfectly. There are missteps and miscommunications, but you get to see everyone grow and learn and come to understand each other better.

Interestingly, one of the main characters is never on the page. The story is written in Adam's letters to his therapist; he sees the guy every week and spends an hour in total silence, then speaks in writing. Adam's one-sided conversation with his therapist reveals so much about his changing view of mental illness and himself. (Similarly, his conversations with his hallucinations reveal different aspects of his soul.) The epistolary format builds tension and allows for Walton to explore the idiosyncrasies of Adam's internal monologue in a way that straight narrative would not. Everything is Adam's interpretation of events--not necessarily reality--and the reader must sift through to find the truth.

The mental illness rep is dicey. If you want my full psychobabble, scroll down below the rating. In short: Walton's description of schizophrenia is somewhat exaggerated, given that visual hallucinations as persistent and talkative as Adam's are extremely rare. However, she approaches therapy, medication, and managing chronic mental illness with a compassionate, realistic bent, so that part helped to level out the somewhat sensationalized version of the disorder. Oh: love doesn't fix everything. THANK YOU DEAR LORD.

Okay, there's my soap box. When I read books about schizophrenia, I basically have to pretend it's a sort of special case or a different thing. Because there's a lot to enjoy about this book, and its compassion towards MI and its effects was palpable. It's witty, heartfelt, and cleverly written. Just know that it's not a totally accurate representation of schizophrenia, and then you can enjoy all the things it does very well.

in a sentence
Words on Bathroom Walls is a darkly witty, poignant, compelling account of a boy dealing with mental illness--and also school, dating, and life.

I appreciate this novel for the perspective that it represents. It was one of the best representations of what it might be like living with schizophrenia that I have read. I was interested in the inclusion of ideas about how drugs can affect people and how they sometimes work and then fail. I think the novel holds some important concepts within, but I didn't find it to be a particularly compelling read. I wanted to read it on principle, but wasn't totally delighted by it in reality. Still, I will buy it for my library because of the unique qualities that it has compared to a great many other mental health books that I have read.

Words on Bathroom Walls is one of those books I want to do justice to in my review; I want to do justice to all of my reviews, let’s be honest, but I feel like it’s especially important with mental health books to make sure you review them correctly, which is something I struggle with really hard because I’m lucky to never have really suffered with my mental health and don’t always understand what people are going through. Yes, you can read about someone like Adam, who suffers from schizophrenia or Norah in Under Rose-Tainted Skies who has agoraphobia but I feel like it’s hard to really, truly understand it unless you have personal experience (not that I would want to suffer either of their experiences).
"That's what you want me to say, isn't it? That I'm emotionally scarred because my dad didn't want to stick around to be my dad? Or that I blame my disease on him? That would be easy."

Words on Bathroom Walls is one of those books that tells, not shows. Adam tells us everything about his life, in the form of a diary, written to his counsellor. He’s starting a new drug trial in the hope of reducing/managing the hallucinations he sees and the voices he hears, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia and, on top of all of that, he also has to start at a new school, in the hopes no one finds out about him. I knew what the book was about going into it, but I have no idea where the title came from. Perhaps I took it way too literally, in expecting there to be words on bathroom walls, but it was lacking in that department. Yes, there was one particular phrase but it must have just been a fitting title, however the meaning of it does escape me.
"I get that I'm not supposed to say that. Everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle, right? But what if they're not? What if the biggest thing they have to worry about is homework and whether they get into a good college? Even if they've lost a family member or their parents are getting a divorce or they're missing someone far away. That is not worse than having to take medication to be in control of your own mind. It's just not."

I really liked Adam’s voice. He’s refreshingly honest about his condition, and it was incredibly interesting to see the different hallucinations he suffers with. Whether it’s the helpful, naked man who coaches him in social situations, or the mob boss who lets rip with a gun whenever he feels like it, or the girl, Rebecca, who’s Adam’s constant companion. Adam’s voice is very sarcastic, very real, very honest. He says himself that he’s hardly a reliable narrator, but I believed him well enough. It was interesting to see how the medication affected him, how it helped him stay grounded in reality, how he could tell the difference between a real person and the tricks his mind was playing on him and to manage all of that, at 16, while navigating a new school and new friends - Dwight and Maya who I loved and wished we’d heard more from, especially Dwight was pretty impressive.
"It's a very strange reality when you can't trust yourself. There's no foundation for anything. The faith I might have had in normal things like gravity or logic or love is gone because my mind might not be reading them correctly. You can't possibly know what it means to doubt everything. To walk into a room full of people and pretend that it's empty because you're not actually sure if it is or not."

There’s a lot of stigma surrounding mental health, the people that will deride others for suffering because it’s not something tangible, that they can see or touch or understand, like cancer. I feel like schizophrenia is one of the worst stigmatised because people automatically jump from being schizophrenic to being a serial killer, as if the two are linked, when really I bet a lot of people are able to manage their schizophrenia and don’t have the tendency to go out and commit mass murder. Words on Bathroom Walls was an incredible read. I hope this lifts the lid a little bit on what it’s like to deal with schizophrenia and while I can’t tell you if it’s brilliant mental health rep, because I have no ties to any of the issues in the book, it seems like it is. I’m happy to correct myself if I’m wrong, but I liked this book. It was an important read, and I loved Adam. Voices, hallucinations, and all.

Words on Bathroom Walls by Julia Walton sounded like such a great book, but I found I was disappointed.

Adam refuses to talk to his therapist, as he doesn't think therapy will help - it's not going to cure him, not going to make him better, so why bother? So instead, his therapist gets him to write instead; he asks him questions during therapy sessions, and Adam answers them and tells him what's happening in his life later, on a notepad. And that is how the story is told, by Adam writing to his therapist. I've read books previously where the whole book was the main character writing to someone, but Words on Bathroom Walls is more realistic in that Adam doesn't write as if the things are happening as he writes them. Which means there is very, very little dialogue, and mostly just stream of consciousness on Adam's part. And I just really didn't like it.

Everything we read is told to us by Adam, we don't actually see any of it. So we don't see relationships develop, we don't really get to know the other characters, we're just told about them, told about the things that happened, and told how Adam is feeling and what he's thinking. And to be honest, not much really happens. He's taking this new medication, which means he now is now able to tell that his visions and the voices he hears aren't really real, which makes it easier to ignore them when they tell him to do things. So, they're just there, while he goes about his normal teenage life where nothing all that interesting happens. He meets a girl, a relationship starts. He makes a friend. He's bullied. But, again, we're all told about it rather than getting to see it. There's a detachment. And I didn't like it, I found it really difficult to connect with the story.

And the story was also really predictable. As we're told in the blurb, the drug works for a while, until it doesn't, and then things start to go wrong. And you can tell what will happen, and you know where things will go after the events. It was just so predictable. That, along with storytelling that isn't to my taste, I just didn't really enjoy the book.

I must say that I think Adam's Schizophrenia was dealt with well - being said who has no experience of Schizophrenia. I just felt like I understood Adam and how he was feeling. What it was like to see and hear things nobody else could see or hear. It was emotional, especially when the class is talking about a Schizophrenic guy who went into a school and shot teachers and kids, and someone shouts out 'Why didn't he just kill himself?' At those times, it was just heartbreaking to read Adam really seeing what people think of people like him, and he can do nothing about it, because he doesn't want anyone to know, but still it hurts, and makes him angry. No-one knows what it's like to be him, and no-one knows what it's like to lose control.

But overall, this book just wasn't for me. I much preferred Made You Up by Francesca Zappia, thought that is about a girl with Paranoid Schizophrenia, so it's slightly different. This wasn't the right fit for me, but it might be for you, so do read a few other reviews before deciding whether or not you want to read Words on Bathroom Walls.

Thank you to Random House Books for Young Readers via NetGalley for the eProof.

As a psychology major, I'm always fascinated with YA books that feature mental illness, which is why I immediately requested this one when I saw the synopsis, and this book did not disappoint. However, I can only give this book 4 stars because it felt kind of flat and didn't really capture my emotions that way other books did.

Words on Bathroom Walls centers on Adam, who was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, and thereafter was sent to another school because of the bullying from his previous school. As a result, he kept his condition a secret from his classmates in this new school while he is undergoing this new drug trial. In this new school, he meets Maya, whom he slowly falls in love with. However, the threat of a bully is still present.

Words on Bathroom Walls, in my opinion, did a good job at portraying what schizophrenia is. I'm not an expert on the subject, but based on what I know the portrayal is pretty accurate. Adam was only able to distinguish visions from reality upon starting medication. Moreover, although he knows they're only visions, they still feel real to him. I think that's really what schizophrenia is like.

I think my favorite character in this book is the step-father. Many would think that Maya is a great character for understanding and supporting Adam all the way through, and I think that she's great, but I think the step-father is the best character. He sort of just lingers there most of the time, not exactly knowing how to interact with Adam, but you know that deep down he loves the kid. He may not always show it, most likely because he doesn't know how to, but he's definitely there ready to defend Adam when it matters the most.

Overall, the book was a good one, I just didn't connect to it in an emotional way. I absolutely love the portrayal of both schizophrenia and family in this novel, and I recommend this to anyone who would want to delve into the mind of someone with schizophrenia for a few hours to know what it feels like.

I read it in less than a day, so I suppose that means I liked it. I struggled with whether to give it a 4 or a 5, but only because I wish things were not so tidy in the end. I'm a lover of the open-ended end, as it were, where I get to decide the future of the book.

Aside from this, however, my tears, my sobs, my aching heart would indicate that this was a very well done book. Very. The chronicle of his experiences and feelings and thoughts gave me the "he's speaking to me" feeling while reading and I loved that. Adam is a wonderful character, too...not wholly lovable or attractive in the traditional sense, but I found myself wanting to grab and hug him so many times. I just love him. I just love his ability to memorize stuff and detach in a way that is clearly not detached and speak about himself as other than himself...he's just so well-crafted a character. I love him.

And I laughed a lot with this book. A lot!!! Dwight's name, the doctor's clothes, Ian naked in the hall? That's genius!!! I am a big fan of this book!

I received a copy from Netgalley.

Never expected to get approved for this one and was quite surprised and pleased when I was. (I so rarely get approved by Random House). Really impressed with the book as well. (Always kind of makes me feel a bit guilty when I get approved for something by a publisher I don’t get approval from and then find I don’t like the book. Thankfully not the case this time.)

This novel tells the story of teenager Adam who suffers from schizophrenia. Adam has quite a unique personality, he knows he’s schizophrenic. He sees illusions, people who aren’t there but the interesting thing I found was while each of these illusions of his seem to have their own personalities and speak to him, he’s actually quite aware of the fact that these people aren’t real. They seem to be some form of emotion he can’t express.

The novel follows Adam as he struggles with his illness and a new experimental treatment drug and starting at a new private Catholic high school. Dealing with the bullies, the geek who winds up becoming a good friend and the girl he has a crush on who becomes a friend and something more.

The novel is told in diary entries through Adam’s therapy sessions – he refuses to speak to his therapist and writes down what’s been going on in his daily life. He’s got a brilliantly blunt tell it how it is attitude, and can be deliciously snarky. Added in some complicated family drama – dad not in picture, mom has new husband. The mom’s new husband was actually pretty decent if a bit dim. Though step dad’s mom was a nightmare. Some interesting ideas on faith as well considering Adam attends a Catholic private school without being too preachy.

Quite realistically handled as well, I though. Some deep emotional turmoil, a sweet romantic storyline as well. Well handled, without being sickly sweet, fair amount of drama, but not too over the top. Ups and downs, sad and funny. Likeable characters, believable parental involvement. A really good read.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Children’s for approving my request to view the title.

Adam Petrazeli has been struggling with schizophrenia since he was 12. When a new drug minimizes his hallucinations and the voices he hears, he switches schools for a fresh start. He befriends Dwight, a quirky braniac and Maya, a feisty intelligent Filipina girl and joins them on the Trivia Bowl team. Just when he life begins to exhibit normalcy, the drug begins losing its effectiveness. Told through journal entries Adam is recording for his psychiatrist, this is a realistic examination of a complex mental illness.

Excellent depiction of daily life for young people with schizophrenia. Allows empathy for younger readers, even though they won't come away with a lot of factual information about this condition.

This is a book that I should not be writing a review for after powering through a reading most in one sitting and finishing the last part past my bedtime the same day. But I will try to coherently form a review about why I love this book and why it needs WAY MORE press.

First, male main character with schizophrenia. I thought, hmmmm, can it be done better than Challenger Deep? I'm not so sure. Oh wait, wait. Yes, yes, she can. Wait, it's a female author because she seems (though I'm not male) to capture the essence of a male main character so well. Family? Sheesh, well I love a protagonist who understands what it means to be a part of a family and sees the value in step-dad Paul's approach to both Adam, main character/schizophrenic step-son along with how he treats his mom, how Paul treats his own mother who thinks that Adam is a step away from a murderous rampage, and more. There was so much life to the adults in the book that I can only applaud this.

Likewise, the historical element of references Sandy Hook- it was both traumatizing, shocking, and SO RELEVANT. Adam goes to a Catholic school- I like the religious aspect. Adam has a girlfriend and they share the awkward, sexy, hard, and fun parts of a relationship? I'm in. Irreverent in a teachable way? YES. Did I laugh out loud? Yes. Did I feel bad for laughing out loud but realized this is why the book is so endearing? Absolutely. There are layers to this beautiful story that can only be pealed back slowly.

And I was so, so nervous at the beginning with it being epistolary, but the originality coupled with the vividness of Adam's character made it important. Blog post in the works! Too many highlights and bookmarks on my Netgalley digital copy!

DNF at 43%. Thank you to the Publisher for the review copy though!