This is a beautiful story of friendship and acceptance. So many of our young people today struggle with anxiety, OCD and various other emotional challenges. This book not only draws attention to these challenges but it does so in a way that allows the reader to better understand the whys and hows. Marshall is just an amazing character. We all wish we had a Marshall in our worlds to make each of us feel loved and accepted. This is a fabulous love story! Such a great book!

All Things New by Lauren Miller, an expressive, impressive read about a young person's ordeal with stress and dealing with anxiety driven lifestyle. Jessica, the main character, in Ms. Miller's narrative hides her anxiety disorder with some success until Jessica's car accident kicks her disorder into high alert. The author Lauren Miller does a wonderful job of creating a realistic storyline regarding current issues for young people. The story elements were well-defined. Some young people deal with mental illness issues daily and hide their issues from family and friends. The daily management of lifestyles and mental concerns can be an unbelievable juggling act for young people. All Things New is a book that provides great conversation openers for families, classrooms, friends. I highly recommend this book for readers over the age of 13 to college.

It is rare that I give a book 5 stars but this one certainly deserves it. It truly spoke to me as I was reading it and I had a hard time putting it down. If you know anyone that suffers from anxiety, you will certainly be able to relate to Jessa in some way. She describes her anxiety and feelings so well it was wonderful.

Accurate in its comparison to THE FAULT IN OUR STARS, but the two are definitely different stories. It's a little forgettable, but I did like the book.

3.5

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

All Things New by Lauren Miller follows the life of a girl living with anxiety and the repercussions a bad night at a party and a subsequent car crash has on her life, leading into a conversation for how one deals with such circumstances. I have to admit, this was a hard book for me to get through, though not because of the subject matter. I actually found the subject matter to be quite intriguing and relatable, which is why I picked this book up in the first place. I’ve lived with anxiety for as long as I can remember, with panic attacks coming and no way of stopping them. And I have to give Miller this, she does a pretty good job (for the most part, anyway) of portraying what it’s like to go through a panic attack.

But that’s about all this story really has that I appreciated.

The book starts out alright, leaving the reader feeling interested and curious about where the book is going to go. It even has a lot of strength in Miller’s portrayal of anxiety, which I haven’t found often in novels. But after a while it just…falls apart. I regularly found Jessa annoying as I neared the end of the novel and I think that this was largely due to a plot device that resulted in her hallucinations and the heavy connection it had to religion and spirituality which I found incredibly irritating. Now, while what she does hallucinate is revealed fairly early on, I won’t reveal that piece to avoid spoilers, but I just found the concept of what she was “seeing” and what it actually meant vastly ridiculous.

When its meaning was revealed about three quarters of the way through the novel, I literally rolled my eyes every single time it was brought up. It just felt exceptionally dumb to me, not to mention quite unrealistic. You have to give up a level of believability in order to accept this portion of the story and in order for me to buy into something like that, the rest of the book has to be pretty exceptional. All Things New was not. There were simply too many far fetched pieces of it for me to accept.

The most irritating piece of this novel, for me however, was the religious/spiritual aspects. This is definitely a personal thing for me, but I just don’t appreciate novels that try to project religious things as reality. I’ve always had a hard time with this and combining it with the poor writing completely ruined the book for me. Now, this aspect wasn’t exceptionally strong within the novel and really only irritated me at the end as ultimately it was the writing and Jessa’s characters that led me to initially dislike the book. But, I can say without a doubt that any chance of improvement was gone the second the spiritual connection was brought up.

Miller also added a number of side plots that felt somewhat distracting, though they weren’t entirely terrible. I found Hannah and Marshall to be the most developed and interesting characters, however there wasn’t really a whole lot going on with them either. Their plots felt somewhat repetitive and as they were told from Jessa’s voice, weren’t really portrayed well. And I really just hated Jessa after a while. She barely developed at all, and any development she did have was credited to some sort of religious interference. Ugh.

Finally, this book spoiled another book for me. I’ve been meaning to read A Picture of Dorian Gray for a few years now, but just not gotten around to it. As Jessa is working on an essay about the book, Miller basically describes the entire plot in her novel. Admittedly, I was rather angry about this, despite knowing that the book in question has been out for a great number of years. Even so, it was thoroughly disappointing to realize that I’ve now had a book I’ve been looking forward to reading completely spoiled for me because someone decided to spell out the entire plot of the novel in their own. So, just a heads up for you readers out there if you haven’t read Dorian Grey and still want to…don’t read Miller’s book until after you do.

I don’t particularly think that All Things New is a bad book, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a good book either. It exists more in the average level, where it’s really just okay. There’s nothing exceptional about it and I feel like very little interesting things happened throughout, but perhaps someone else might feel completely differently.

I thought that Miller did a great job of getting us to connect with Jessa right away. Her mental health issues and the fact that she was totally wronged by her boyfriend set us up to sympathize with her right from the start. The book doesn't have a lot of action---it's more of a character study, which was okay with me for the most part. It did take a turn toward the end that threw me (even though I was expecting the twist---the reasoning behind it was surprising to me for a book that focused on mental health, and I wasn't 100% sure about it). I totally loved Marshall, though, and I loved the complex relationship between Jessa and Marshall's sister.

Even if Jessa Gray wasn't in an accident, she is the embodiment of teenagers today. Her anxiety is now through the roof and it seems like love maybe the answer.

I unfortunately did not connect with this book, I’m not sure why but did now I had to DNF it, maybe I’ll give it another go some other time.

Yet another book that covers mental illnesses among young people. But this one is really good I promise, and real! A young girl gets into a car accident while having a panic attack, and things seem to get worse after it. Her family drama, her cheating boyfriend and the friends that abandoned her seem too much. How to cope with all of that? Add a brain injury and scars on the face to the mix and you can try to imagine how Jessa, the main character feels.


Jessa is trying to fit in with hiding her anxiety but that doesn't work very well. Sometimes you have to accept it and just try to work on it. So she moves to a different place and starts from scratch. She meets the twins Hannah and Marshall, who teach her a thing or two about life.

As a person who is also struggling with anxiety, I have to admit this book is pretty real about it. There are so many good quotes I could relate to. It was easy to connect with the main character and feel for her. The book is not triggering at all for people with anxiety. I would say quite the opposite. It inspired me to get better, to keep trying, and kudos to that!

I also loved Marshall, his character was really positive and cute.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good read that represents the negative and the positive sides of living with anxiety.

Such a relevant book for teenage girls and a really interesting insight into anxiety.

YA novels are always very hit or miss for me. As a full fledged adult I read them (as many do) and there are pieces of the human condition that will ALWAYS translate. A good YA book shouldn't be classified as solely a "good YA book". A good book is a good book is a good book.

This is a solid effort that focuses on how prevalent panic attacks are in today's society. I deal with them myself, so when Jessa explains the attacks she has I am with her. There is some bridges built between this book and the Picture of Dorian Gray. I liked the nod in this context to bring me back to my college class in critical reading. I would definitely read another book by this author.

Sorry but I was unable to give a review for this book as the file didn't open correctly on my e-reader.

A thoughtful and compassionate read about a young woman scarred not only on the outside, but the inside, and her struggle to find her way after a terrible accident. She finds that in running away she does not escape her problem. It is only when she makes friends with a young man and his sister that she finds hope and meaning.

To be honest, I did not actually finish reading this book. I simply did not enjoy it.
This book could have been great. The descriptions of anxiety that the main character experienced were well written and seemed somewhat believable. Unfortunately, I feel like very often books that center on mental health issues tend to disregard how helpful mental health professionals can actually be. Like, they are trained to help people and spend their entire lives working on just that. So maybe more positive portrayals of a mental health specialist would encourage youth to ask for and receive help?
I also felt that the characters mostly felt flat throughout the book. I did not witness much character growth throughout the story, and the romantic relationship felt forced.

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title. Unfortunately, I have lost interest in the title, partly due to trusted reviews, and will not be reviewing the title. I have, however, promoed the title through my weekly recap with links to Amazon. Thank you again, and I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause.

I really enjoyed this book. Jessa is a character I really understood and admired despite her insecurities and anxiety. It's a book suitable for all ages and I will defintiely recommend it to my family and friends.

This book wasn't my cup of tea, whether it's the subject matter or the writing style I don't know but found myself struggling to read this one. I dd persevere to the end and liked the outcome but this book didn't make me excited. Unfortunately this one gets 3*s from me.

Beautifully writren novel I absolutely loved the whole story line from start to finish x

This is one of the best depections of anxiety that I have ever read. Jessa’s thoughts are invasive and controlling-- physically represented by lower-case italics that interject her conversations and several daily activities.

All too often, YA treats mental illeness like something that can be ‘cured.’ Like throwing the two love interests together will ‘fix’ them and everyone will be magically happy. Not here. Jessa previously tried to move past her struggles by throwing herself into her relationship, sacrifcing part of her identity in doing so. This was a really strong plot point, and handled very well.

I really enjoyed most of the characters! Marshall is fun, with creative outlooks on life. Struggling with a heart-condition since birth (that left him without symptoms) he has a completely different definition of what it means to be ‘sick” and it lead to interesting discussions.

Marshall’s sister, Hannah, was also a very interesting character. Devoted entirely to her piano studies, she quickly has to reevaluate her goals and what she’s willing to do to get there. I also appreciated the large amount of focus on Jessa/Hannah's friendship, instead of just focusing on Jessa’s romantic relationship.

Cons:

That ending was disappointing.

Suddenly everything turned into a Hallmark special? With all this talk of souls and miracles and everything magically working out?

It just felt like a cop-out to me, and the heavily spiritual themes overshadowed the previous character development. Jessa no longer had to find strength inside herself, as the universe handled things for her.

With so many interesting characters and dynamics, I don’t understand why Jessa’s relationship with her mother was completely glossed over? There are references to Jessa not getting along with her new stepfamily, and wishing she belonged, but nothing where she ever tries to work this out. It almost seemed an easy way to write her mother and old life out?