This novel was a new take on the inner workings of anxiety. I enjoyed this book, but as a non sufferer, found certainly some parts of it unusual and harder to understand until nearer completetion of the narration. I liked the development of the plot and the playful friendships and budding romance. This may be a really helpful book for teens with anxiety.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I dove into All Things New. The reviews are mixed (and yes, I read some of them before I started) and so I knew that this thing could go either way for me. I didn’t really expect that it would sort of blow me away. Or that it would tease my brain in a way that opened up my mind and kept me thinking about how things ended long after I turned the last page.

You guys? As far as I’m concerned this is the very best kind of YA book. Thought provoking, interesting, compelling , and full of real-life issues – I literally couldn’t put this book down. I read it in basically one sitting and I would enthusiastically recommend it for adults and young adults alike.

The storytelling is so great – I connected instantly with the writing style and with Jessa’s voice. Was I sometimes frustrated with her? Of course. But she was sometimes frustrated with herself, so I felt like that was the whole point. She resonated with me. I felt her struggles and loved watching her blossom as she grew and dealt with her issues. And Marshall? UGH. Of all the goofily adorable heroes – this guy takes the cake. I adored him. I loved how he treated Jessa – no, how he treated every single person he encountered. His heart is golden and he’s just an amazing character. The two of them together were adorable, uplifting, and heartwarming.

But this book isn’t just about a super sweet young adult relationship. There are a lot of heavy hitting issues addressed here – from mental health, to physical health, to learning how to navigate in a world that sometimes hurts just to exist in. There are philosophical elements and spiritual elements and the whole thing is wrapped up in this beautifully written, completely compelling package. I know it won’t work for everyone, but it completely worked for me and I think it’s most definitely worth checking out! ~ 4.5 Stars

This book centers around a high school girl by the Name of Jessa. When Jessa was in middle school, her parents got a divorce which causes her to develop deep anxiety. Of course, her mother helps Jessa gets help for the attacks but when it doesn’t work, Jessa decides to leave it. Soon after all of these bombs, Jessa mother makes things worst by remarrying and having a new family, which makes Jessa Anxiety worst. All of these things cause Jessa, to focus more on body image and hanging out with the wrong people. She meets a guy name Wren and everything seems to become about him and what he wants as well as her image. She fakes being the perfect popular kid to get through the anxiety. In some weird way, all of this helps her by giving her some control over her life. But on new year’s eve, after two years of dating, she finds out how much Wren is the wrong guy for her. The information she finds out causes a car accident which leads to changes in Jessa’s life. These big changes may just save her and help her grow to be a better person. So in order for you to know the rest, you need to buy this book, especially if you deal with Mental health. I do want to say that Jessa also has experiences with the spiritual world, just in case you don’t feel that way about things. Now onto my thoughts about what I felt from this book.

All Things New by Lauren Miller is a YA novel about adolescents who have trouble fitting in with their peers due to one thing or another. The main character, Jessa, suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, and a horrific automobile accident ramped them up ten-fold. Her friends, twins Hannah and Marshall, each have their own issues. Hannah over-medicates herself in an attempt to reduce her stress due to her perfectionist mindset, while Marshall has a congenital heart-condition.

This book was just OK for me. I found Marshall to be the most endearing character, as he wasn't all gloom and doom. He was witty and zany.

A quick read, many readers will find this to their liking. It definitely has a spiritual leaning which may thrill some readers and turn others off.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Three Saints Press for allowing me to read an e-ARC of this YA novel.

Jessa is so much stronger than she knows! To watch her grow and come to terms with her issues and her struggles and finally open up about them was such a treat! So man teenagers today deal with panic, anxiety, depression and put so much pressure on themselves that its important that stories like this are out there.

Story:
All Things New is an important book, as it deals with panic and mental disorders in teenagers. There were some aspects of the book that I found extremely good, and others I could have done without.
The 'angel' aspect did not work for me. Nor did the fact that the psychiatrists in this book were all smirking, pill-pushing individuals. I also think I would have liked it more if the group therapy was actually group therapy, not a group of teens just sharing among themselves, without adult supervision.
Also, it seems more than a little flimsy to me that 'love' can help Jessa get better - this could be a problem for people who do suffer from panic attacks.
I did appreciate the fact that there are parents present in All Things New. It's important sometimes to see responsible family situations.

Characters:
Jessa had some techniques to deal with her panic attacks, but not all of them helped. After a car accident, she moved to her dad's place in Colorado, to get away from everything that had made things difficult to her.
Hannah is Jessa's new best friend. A music prodigy who is stressed out, and sad about taking second-seat to her brother's illness.
Marshall is Hannah's brother. He has a hole in his heart, and is strangely happy about that.

Writing style :
First person present tense from Hannah's perspective, but with third person present tense when the spotlight is on other characters. The dialogues were rapid, and made getting to know the characters easier.

Feels :
I was a bit frustrated, to be honest. All Things New could have been a great story about teens who struggle with mental illnesses, but it felt like it didn't take mental illness seriously.

I loved this book! The lead character's struggle with mental health issues is realistic and important for teen readers. The story is strong and her work to overcome her mental health issues is powerful. I Will be highly recommending this book to team readers.

All Things New is a story all readers of YA fiction will be ready and raring to read this August and it does not disappoint. It’s a charming page turner with a poignant message and a cute little love story to boot – pick it up August 1st.

Firstly, a very big thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

First things first, opening the first page. This book was incredibly easy to get into; Lauren Miller really understands the importance of a fierce opening. We are instantly drawn into Jessa’s life: a lonely LA adolescence tainted by the anxiety she hides from the world. The event that changes everything is described in a way that commands the reader to keep going and follow Jessa on her recovery journey. It’s a recovery not just from the accident but from a lie she’s been living and truths she’s been constantly overlooking.

I’m a wee bit biased about this book because I found so very much of it so easy to relate to; Jessa is a likeable underdog and represents so much – most importantly she is a vessel for exploring mental health. Miller literally takes that slogan “what if we treated all illness like it was physical” and plays about with it on the page in this gorgeous little novel. The way she plays with truth using medical fact is thoroughly engaging and keeps the message upfront and easy to comprehend.

The only thing I would potentially criticise is that I certainly could have read more of it. The narrative seemed to end quite suddenly given the time Miller took to build the story’s concepts and I think there was definitely more story left to tell. That being said, forcing a story beyond its natural length is a sure way to ruin a book so perhaps it was just right left where it was. I’ve seen it compared to The Fault in Our Stars and other popular YA books but felt it more in the region of Juniper Lemon’s Happiness Index by Julie Israel myself. Overall I found it to be an enjoyable and accomplished YA novel with some interesting themes.

I haven’t read Parallel or Free to Fall, Miller’s other books, but if they’re anything like this I’m sure to find time for them. I’d dub this a worthwhile read for any YA reader.

If you liked All Things New, try Juniper Lemon’s Happiness Index.

First off, I felt it read in a much younger way than I expected. MC has an anxiety disorder, her boyfriend cheats, her face gets mangled in an accident..and all things hard and bad. But I couldn't shake the feeling that the author had put a cushion between everything i was experiencing.

It stayed on 2 stars til towards the end where the story took a super-natural turn, and then went on a big christian spiel that I have zero tolerance for.

On a positive not, I like the cover.

The premise of this book was great - and I think all of the subject matter is important and should definitely be seen more in the YA genre. However, I honestly just didn't feel like I emotionally bonded very well to the main character, and so that made really understanding her perspective difficult. Also, I felt that - between the body image issues to the psychological/scientific issues (which honestly confused me, because I wasn't sure if it was real or not), the friend addiction stuff, and the parent stuff, it was just....a lot. I feel like it would be better to try to tackle maybe half of the issues that were presented in the book - and to really delve deeper into focusing on those - would've made it much deeper for me as a reader. I felt that the subject matter was very broad, but also for that reason very shallow, and just tried to tackle too much at once. I would definitely give the author another shot though. (And the romance was adorable!)

I received a free e-copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars.

I feel really conflicted about this book. I want to love it, given that it is about a struggle with anxiety, which I have personal experience of, and later learning that the main character suffers from aphantasia, which I also have, it should be right up my street. I just didn't manage to connect with the characters as much as I would have liked to.

I'll start with the non spoiler points and then mark the spoilery section with the spoiler tag, I wouldn't recommend reading the spoiler section without reading the book, I went into this expecting to absolutely hate it after accidentally reading a negative review containing spoilers, and it really coloured my view of the book. Just read the book people.

Jessa is a pretty girl, with a life that seems perfect, she has the athlete boyfriend, the handbag designer Mom and twin half-brothers. In reality her boyfriend is cheating on her, pressuring her to have sex and knows almost nothing about her, she feels like her Mom ignores the things about her that would disrupt her perfect life, and she seems to feel almost resentful towards her entire family. She also has Generalised Anxiety Disorder. After a car accident she develops aphantasia and begins to see bruises and wounds on the faces of the people around her, but those wounds are not real.

Aphantasia is when you cannot imagine things you can sense, there are varying ways aphantasia can affect each person but in Jessa's case she cannot picture anything in her mind's eye, she is 'mind-blind'. Although the author does not have aphantasia herself, she states that she had done a lot of research into the topic and in my opinion, being 'mind-blind' myself, she does a spectacular job of describing it. Jessa's struggle feels authentic, I cannot honestly say that I would have written anything differently. I just wish that aphantasia was mentioned in the synopsis as I have never come across another book which explore it.

The anxiety portrayed feels a little less authentic to me, but I am going to say that the author does struggle with anxiety herself and so this is likely to be down to the fact that everyone experiences mental health differently and no two people are ever going to have the exact same struggle.

The main reason I didn't completely fall in love with this book is that there was just nothing that made me invested in the story, while the explanation behind the phantom wounds was a brilliant idea, I saw it coming around halfway through the story and wish that it had have been revealed earlier in order to really flesh it out. I couldn't connect with any of the characters, I liked Marshall but only for the comic relief, I liked Hannah but only until her personality began to change fairly early on. I think the character I connected to most was Jessa's dad, I felt sorry for him always being shut down when he tried to help his daughter, I found myself irritated with Jessa for how ignorant she was about how she was treating him. I found reading this book more interesting for the aphantasia and anxiety elements than for the characters or the story. I just feel like if certain elements had been explained earlier or in more detail, I would have been more invested.

Now on to the spoilers...

<spoiler>
I knew from the second the 'doctor' at the accident placed Jessa's driver's licence in plain view, he either didn't intend to stick around or wasn't visible to anyone else. While this didn't immediately lead me to think 'Angel', I did begin to wonder if Jessa was hallucinating. Throughout much of the book I held the view that this is what was happening.

The ending disappointed me, I have no problem with the religious aspect, but I did have a problem with the insinuation that Jessa is now magically better and that the mental health professionals who tried to help her were all wrong. I think this is a dangerous thing to include in a YA novel, while many people find that faith is important in their recovery from traumatic events and mental illness, professional therapy and medication should not be depicted as unilaterally ineffective. While I acknowledge that Jessa decides to attend therapy in the conclusion of the book, it is such a throwaway line that I almost missed it, and I was looking for it. Teens need to know that there are many options to consider when dealing with mental illness, and that a few therapy sessions or a short experience with one medication does not mean that those options are ineffective, therapy is a long and complicated process and medication can involve a lot of trial and error. My fear is that someone already frustrated with therapy or medication may lose even more commitment to those options and may suffer for it.

I think that the idea of being able to see the damage to the soul in peoples' faces is a fantastic one, I cannot express how excited I was when I figured it out, but then Jessa remained largely clueless for most of the rest of the book and when she did finally figure it out, she lost the ability soon after. Even the man that nobody else could see interested me, but that was never really explored either. I just wish these avenues had been better and more thoroughly explored earlier in the book.

I choose to believe that Jessa was hallucinating, and knowing that psychiatric medications can take various lengths of time to become effective, those hallucinations stopped when her meds began to help, along with the relief of finally being able to open up about her struggles. I think that may be the only way to alleviate my frustration with the ending.
</spoiler>

Lesson learned: Never judge a freebie book based on its "freebie" status! So not only did I receive a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, it was also a 'download now' free copy, meaning that I didn't have to be approved or anything in order to read it. I usually equate these books--in my mind--to the freebies of the ARC world. That aside, I thought that this book was a really good read and I very much enjoyed it.

Jessa has suffered from an anxiety disorder since her father left her mother when she was just twelve years old. Now, at 17, she is barely getting through school living with her mom in L.A. and clinging to her prepster boyfriend. Until one night at a party changes everything. A near-fatal car accident leaves Jessa's face scar-ridden, and her brain nearly as damaged, she decides to leave everything behind to live with her dad in Colorado. Here she meets new people, reconciles with her father, and learns about the true measure of healing both inside and out.

Don't you just love these kind of books where you know right from the first page that you're going to love them? Because when I picked up All Things New and started reading it, I had that exact feeling. I couldn't even figure out why that was - the writing, maybe? The opening scene, because I just love college party scenes? I have no idea. It was probably both, mixed with this character that seemed so interested that I wanted to find out more and more, get lost in her world and not come back for a while. And Lauren Miller managed to write that kind of book for me - one I never wanted to end.

And even when I somehow knew what the mystery was all about after Jessa's accident, I was still under Lauren Miller's writing spell and couldn't put the book down. She seems like the kind of author that knows exactly how long a scene should be, like she has developed a feeling for it over the years of writing novels. Or perhaps she knows what the readers want to read, not being bored by dragged scenes, forced words and annoying facts. It has a good length and everything was sorted out at a good pace.

I think only few books capture the importance of speaking up about mental illness in a athentic way. Some characters are over the top, some escape their demons without any struggle as if it's the easiest thing in the world. Even though it isn't. And I think Jessa's character is the perfect example. Her problems might not seem that big of a deal to some, but I liked that certain realness to her - to all the characters, really. Her friends dealt with their own problems as well. Lauren Miller found an honest voice, ripped things down to a raw level that had me in tears several times.

There's beauty in everything and so it's no miracle that despite all the things Jessa has been and is going through during the story, there were a lot of aww! moments, too. Dare I say how awesome I think Marshall is?! He's like this inconspicuous guy, but of course there is more to him than that. Like certain types of magnets, I loved how drawn together he and Jessa were. I adored them.

Perhaps this book is more of a self help books than those books intended. As mentioned before, there is no sugarcoating anything in All Things New and I loved it to pieces. It's one of my favourite novels of the year and I can't wait for more people to discover their love for it. It's unlike anything I've read more, classified to the pile of books that really did an impact on me.

All Things New is about a teenage girl who suffers from generalized anxiety disorder. Jessa’s attacks started when her parents got divorced and her father moved away. Her only real friend was her boyfriend, Wren, or so she thought. He cheated on her during a New Year’s Eve party at his house. When Jessa left his house, her anxiety in full force, she was in a horrific car accident. After the accident, Jessa’s dad encouraged her to live with him and start anew in a different type of high school. This was when the story became even more intense… with Jessa suffering from not only her facial accident scars, but an increase mental illness that had her seeing bruises and scars on other people she met like her classmates. However, with the help of her new friends, her dad,and boyfriend, Jessa’s “scars” start to heal.
Jessa’s encounter with the “man in the white coat” was a very interesting twist to this story as well as the analogy with Descartes’s philosophy to her life.
The characters are complex, the plot is intriguing, and the dialogue is engaging. This is a fascinating YA read!

Jessa Gray is seventeen, with a boyfriend she loves, a few friends, and a place she belongs. At least, a place she looks like she belongs: living with her mom and hanging out with her boyfriend’s crowd. But inside, Jessa is a mess, suffering horrible panic attacks that medication and therapy haven’t helped, and always feeling like an outsider. When a terrible accident leaves Jessa with a brain injury, she sees bruises and scars on everyone around her, and thinks she must be going crazy for real. The chance to move to Colorado with her dad and start over is Jessa’s lifeline.

Instead of being the haven she was looking for, the move makes Jessa’s anxiety worse, until she meets Marshall, the quirky boy with a heart defect who makes her see life a whole new way. Though Jessa starts to feel like she belongs in this new life, she still sees wounds on everyone around her, and wonders if she’ll ever be “normal” again.

I’ve never suffered from anxiety quite like Jessa did, although I do have the occasional panic attack that sends my brain into a frenzy and throws the world into chaos. All Things New captures the pandemonium of anxiety and panic attacks, and shows readers just what if feels like to live with these issues. More importantly, it shows what it’s like to survive with them, and to grow. Jessa is entirely relatable, she doesn’t think she’s normal, but she is: everyone is dealing with something, which she eventually learns. Marshall is funny and sweet, and he helps Jessa look at the world without the veil of her anxiety. Both humorous and heart-wrenching, All Things New is an enthralling read, bursting with vivid life.

(Galley provided by Three Saints Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.)

full review on Goodreads

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick and easy read, all in it must have taken maybe 3/4 hours to finish, but I enjoyed it. Jessa's story interested me as soon as I saw the description, I thought the author did a pretty good job at describing panic attacks/generalised anxiety disorder. I enjoyed Marshall and Hannah's characters as well. The idea of seeing visible signs of people's mental health was interesting, pretty confusing at first I thought, I wouldn't say it was my favourite part of the book, but I didn't completely hate it. I could feel myself rolling my eyes when the talk about angels started though, again, an interesting idea, but again, I could have done without that part. Overall I liked the book, a quick read that kept me interested all the way through.
3/5 stars

“We see what we want to see, what we expect to see, instead of what’s really there. I don’t think we do it on purpose, most of the time. We just get kind of stuck. We start thinking that the way things are is the way they’ll be. But that’s not true. It can’t be true. Because the world is never still.”

This story is very difficult for me to review. I have never read anything similar or came across similar disorders in my everyday life. I solely requested this book because I’ve had my eye on Lauren Miller ever since I’ve read her sci-fi novel “Free to fall” a few years back. This one is very different but I can attest that her writing has only gotten better; it matured like good wine that warms your insides and goes straight to your head.

From the first pages of the book is known to the reader that Jessa, a 17 yo girl, is suffering from an anxiety disorder since she was twelve and her parents divorced, and often has panic attacks. After many failed attempts in therapy, inefficient drugs prescriptions and support group meetings she managed to convince herself that if she appears to be well then she is well and she resorted to suppress her condition or ignore it altogether. This behavior resulted to Jessa’s withdrawal from her friends, alienation from her mother and the obsessive attachment to her boyfriend of two years, Wren. But something happens in the beginning of the story that turns Jessa’s world upside down and throws her off the wagon.

”I’m talking about this moment, which came out of nowhere and swallowed up everything else.”

Now she has to face the fact that she can’t hide what’s happening inside her because she lost her perfect mask. And she can’t cope with this change. Other side effects from her accident add more malfunctions to her already troubled mind and enhance her inability to find her previous balance.

“Except I’m not Barbie anymore, not unless they make an Accident Victim Barbie, Brain Injurie Barbie, ew mommy that one is scary-looking, take her away Barbie. As if Barbie can be anything but flawless, anything other than hollow and plastic and perfect.
When she stops being that, she stops being Barbie. She’s just a broken ugly doll that nobody wants.
That dirt is everywhere, I am sinking in it, I can’t breathe. Like sewer water bubbling up through a crack in the pavement, the truth of how messed up I am is on the surface now. It’s all anyone will see.”

For me, these first chapters were very confusing. Jessa’s thoughts are very chaotic, the perception of her surroundings is misconceived and untrustworthy, she’s being rude to her family and the hospital stuff, she questions everything anyone tells her, trying to find hidden meanings behind simple things, always misinterpreting their intentions for the worse. I often caught myself being, instead of sympathetic, exasperated with her behavior, calling “please just get over yourself for one minute, it’s not the end of the world”. But then I thought that having this condition that went unaddressed for so long and was ignored not only from Jessa herself, but from her mother too, totally justified such behavior. And that for Jessa, this probably was the end of the world. The end of her world as she knew it. Not everyone has the strength to believe in his capability to overcome any curve-ball life throws at him.

Me, for one, am a very strong and cool headed person - I take that after my dad. I can easily accept facts or situations that are out of my control and seem to adapt to change as easily. And because of these “traits” of my character I often don’t appear to have the necessary empathy for others who don’t share my good fortune in genes, and I might come as cruel or unfeeling. So I want to apologize in advance, if my thoughts and feelings presented in my review, offends anyone who reads it. Believe me, it’s not my intend to hurt anyone’s feelings, it’s just my ignorance in the matter of anxiety and my inability to relate.

After the accident, Jessa moves from California to Colorado to live with her dad and start fresh. She enrolls in the local high school, where she meets Hannah and her twin brother Marshall. The three of them soon become friends who spend a lot of time together and though Jessa has put some ground rules for her new life permitting herself to acquire a new boyfriend, she surprisingly finds herself attracted to Marshall’s winning personality.

“Wren used to give me butterflies, but this is more like a frog on speed, thumping in a jar.”

What I noticed early on, was that Jessa interacts with as few people as possible, often hiding herself in secluded places or avoiding socializing at all cost. It had me wondering how it is possible for a young person to have only 3 people in her life. Of course her newly acquired condition “aphantasia” doesn’t help things in her new environment. It makes her question herself all the time and not being able to trust her mind turns her seclusive even more.

“I try to envision the house, or their piano, or Hannah’s face, something, anything, but I am sucking air from a drained glass, scraping a spoon against the bottom of an empty bowl.”

I didn’t expect to care so much about the other characters in the story, what with being constantly in Jessa’s mind and all, but eventually I cared because Jessa started to care. Hannah is a girl that appears to be strong, self-sufficient, very determined to succeed in her goal, healthy. Marshall, on the other hand, was born with a heart defect which wears on his sleeve and exploits in every opportunity. He likes being pampered all the time but he is more than a spoiled brat. Of course nothing is what appears to be on the surface.

“That’s the thing about the invisible world, I guess. Where souls get battered and minds get muddled and hearts get broken again and again. It’s a war zone, a disaster area, but no one wants to talk about how messed up things are, so we let each other pretend. We play along, we act like we’re all okay. But we’re not okay. All the junk we’re hiding is right there, right in front of us, right within us. The brokenness, and the desolation and the despair. We tell ourselves it’ll get better if we just ignore it. But wounds don’t work that way. Leave them open, and you’ll bleed out.”

I won’t say much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil it, except that the second half of the book was progressively better, it provided a more concrete insight in Jessa’s internal struggle without being tiring or repetitive, followed by some religious and philosophical questionings and I found the parallel reference to Dorian Gray brilliant.

“ A dragon is exactly what it feels like, my panic. Breathing fire in my gut.“

The author’s pen is very strong, her words have impact, they bruise; they’re acidic, they burn; they’re sharp, they cut, leaving behind them bruises, burns and scars to the reader’s soul similar to the ones Jessa pictures in other people’s faces. They are fitting to Jessa’s heightened emotions and her soul’s turmoil.

“Jessa, Marshal says, his eyes pulling at mine. Two fish hooks, trying to drug my insides out.”

But, at the same time, the author’s approach on the subject remains humane with a sensitivity that moved me very much. The change developed in Jessa’s mind after the realization that she’s not alone, both in her life and her mental struggle, was tangible and liberating.

“And it strikes me in this moment that Marshall was wrong. It’s not that we’re all broken inside. It’s that we’re not. Brokenness is just like beauty; it’s something we wear and carry, and if we let it define us, it will. But we are not our beauty or our brokenness, because souls are not made of beauty or brokenness. Souls are made of something permanent.
Souls are made of truth.”

All in all, a very important story, told in a unique, non-didactic way, that probes the reader to ponder over further. I would recommend it to EVERYONE who loves a good book that gives food to the mind.

The quotes above are from an arc and are subject to change upon publication.

This is the story of Jessa, a teen who suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks. While she has learned to hide her anxiety much of the time, and the panic attacks have become less frequent, she really hasn't gotten "better". After discovering her boyfriend has been cheating on her at a party, Jessa leaves and ends up in a terrible car accident, leaving her as damaged on the outside as she is on the inside. In addition, she finds that she cannot form images in her mind, but she starts seeing injuries on other people's faces that aren't really there. She goes to live with her father for a fresh start and a change of scenery, where thanks to new friendships she slowly begins to heal and make sense of her strange symptoms.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. I found the premise very interesting, and in some ways Iiked the story very much, but there were some issues. Jessa was a sympathetic character, but so much of the story was spent in her head, and seemed a bit cold and detached. For me this wasn't really a problem, but I think some readers would get bored and lose interest without a little more dialogue and emotional responses to liven it up. I loved the character of Marshall; he breathed some much needed life and levity into the story. Without giving too much away, I thought the way Jessa's hallucinations were explained in the end was good, but I personally felt the story got bogged down with the heavy religious awakening and imagery at the end, that didn't seem to fit the tone of the rest of the story. Also the ending seemed to be just a bit rushed, with a lot happening in a very short time, while the story prior to that had moved very slowly. I would prefer the pace to be evened out just a little more.

I would recommend this book to readers that do not need a lot of action and dialogue to hold their interest, and enjoy books that are more psychological, philosphical, and introspective in nature, that have a character working through issues and feelings, on an emotional journey rather than a physical one.

All Things New is the story of Jessa, who manages to cover up her anxiety until one night when she discovers something heart-breaking and ends up in a tragic accident. What follows is Jessa trying to rebuild her life and get control over her anxiety. This one gets a mixed review from me: some parts I really loved and others I couldn't get on with at all. I'm going to start by getting my negatives out of the way. At times the pyschology around anxiety bordered on sounding like a text book and the dialogue at these moments felt stilted and unrealistic. My other main complaint is the angel storyline which I just couldn't get on with at all: I think I was hoping for something more realistic and sinister to wrap up that thread. I felt like, particularly towards the end, a lot of the plotlines were wrapped up quite quickly and not resolved satisfactorily: I wanted to know more. For the most part though, it was a great story and well written. I loved the idea of Jessa losing her mind's eye after her accident and that she saw other people's wounds on their faces (this is one of the lines I wish had been explored more). The novel has a strong opening and the descriptions of Jessa's life with anxiety are outstanding. I loved the way that anxiety was represented in the novel, and how this was amplified by being a first-person narrative. I loved the friendship between Jessa and Hannah, and her relationship with Martin and how these formed and developed as the story went on. I would have liked more detail of Hannah's struggle, as this was a fascinating and important side story and I felt that Jessa's own story overshadowed it a lot: I can see why this is, I just really wanted to know more about what Hannah was going through. I really struggled with the ending to the novel with angel story line. I just didn't find it believable enough, and that let the ending down for me. Overall though, this is an interesting read and I would recommend it for anyone looking to get an insight into living with anxiety.

This review will go live on my blog charlottesomewhere.wordpress.com on 28th July.