Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

This is a book that deals with the very sad but very realistic stories of loss and mental illness, specifically depression. It is quite a mature read and you need to be ready to deal with difficult subjects before picking this up.

We meet Claudette as she is leaving hospital after suffering from a manic episode in addition to depression. She leaves to find that her secret friend, Sarah is missing. She feels that to right herself she must find Sarah - and once her body is found must find out who killed her. The book details her recovery with the help of her family and friends. She has to face some unpalatable truths about her herself and find a way to move forward.

This is a challenging read with very 'adult' themes - I found the circumstances that Sarah and Ross lived in unbelievably sad but I am sure realistic. The author dealt with living with depression very well and managed to end the book with a note of 'hope'.

I would recommend this book but only to more mature readers because of its hard content, sexual references and language.

Another Place tells the story of Claudette who’s just come home after being in recovery from severe depression. She’s welcomed by the news that one of the girls she was closer to than the world things, Sarah, has gone missing. Over the next couple of weeks, Claudette takes it upon herself to investigate Sarah’s disappearance, getting wrapped up in the more criminal side of town as she’s digs further and further into what was really going on.

I was intrigued by this from the very first moment. Disappearances are one of my favourite things to happen in YA and I’m a huge fan of any kind of mystery. But, what I thought I’d love it for wasn’t actually the strongest reason for my high rating. It was the nuanced relationships between characters and the portrayal of a small town gang that felt so authentic and threatening. Usually, when I read about misfits or loners, the characters come across as types – people that are more words than actions. In Another Place I was genuinely convinced that Sarah and Claudette, by default, shouldn’t be messing with these people.

My favourite relationship was between Claudette and her father’s long term partner. It was amazing to see a relationship that’s normally presented as terse, with the ‘ugh, you’re not my mum’ mentality be flipped on it’s head. She actually cared for Claudette and Claudette let her, realising that a secondary mother figure isn’t something to be afraid of, but something wonderful instead. More of this, please.

Split into four or five part, Another Place is hard to put down as more things get revealed about the mystery and as circumstances get increasingly sinister. The elements of backstory and flashbacks to Sarah and Claudette’s relationship before her hospitalisation were in sharp focus compared to the rest of the book, standing out as pivotal to the book.

I can’t speak for the accuracy of representation of Claudette’s depression, but it was definitely complex and explored as opposed to something that was part of her, unspoken. Overall, Another Place was a surprisingly gripping read, and definitely something I’d recommend if you’re a fan of mysteries, and the gritty real-life side of YA.

Apart from a really, really accurate description of depression right at the very end of the book, this book didn't really have much of an impact on me. The story was enjoyable to read, but I didn't really have strong opinions on whether it was good or bad. It was just one of those in the middle books that was good enough to read but doesn't really go much further than that.

I liked the main character, the depiction of her feelings felt accurate and very present throughout the book. She was easy to like, because it was obvious that she cared deeply about finding Sarah and her really bad depression periods were shown accurately but not in too much detail. Sometimes going into the nitty gritty detail of depression can be off-putting. In this book it more goes into the time lost when you're depressed. It's pictured like she just goes dark and stays in her room for days, which is exactly how it feels like when you emerge from deep depression like that.

Really that's all I can say about this. It's obvious that a lot of thought went into this and it's got some really good descriptions of how it feels to be depressed, but as a story, I didn't find it particularly compelling.

So if you want to understand depression, it's a great book, if you're looking for a story to get lost in you might want to pick up a different one.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it's not my usual read, but I enjoyed it none the less. I really liked the character Claudette, even though she was fighting her own battles, she still tried to make the world a better place.

Even though I lost interest half-way through, Another Place is by no means a bad book; Matthew Crow has written about a teenage girl with depression with incredible realism and sensitivity, and does not shy away from the unpleasantness of it all. Although I found the actual plot too slow, I can only applaud Crow’s writing and the way he crafts his characters – every character was well-developed and had a unique voice, everyone had a purpose and something to add to the novel.

The story itself follows sixteen-year-old Claudette, recently released from a psychiatric hospital following a struggle with depression and a breakdown, and the disappearance of Sarah, one of Claudette’s classmates who seemed to exist within the darker side of society. The small town in which she lives is reeling from Sarah’s disappearance, as well as being unsure how to react to Claudette now that she’s out of hospital.

The good:
- Realistic depiction of depression in teenagers. I found Claudette to be a very real character; she’s only young and dealing with a lot in terms of her mental health, she has to learn how to cope with her depression and deal with the way it affects her life. I know that at sixteen I was not coping well, so Claudette being written as sometimes grumpy, listless, selfish, all felt authentic – mental illness sucks and should never be romanticised, and it hasn’t been here.
- Character interaction and development. The characters are brilliant, all their little quirks and nuances makes them feel like real people, and I loved the way Claudette and her dad interacted. So adorable.
- Hints at darkness. The story is set in a small town where everyone seems to know everyone, but there are hints early on at something darker going on within the town.

The not so good:
- Plotline. We know that Claudette has a breakdown, we know that Sarah has disappeared. After that there wasn’t much excitement for me – Claudette decides to solve the mystery of Sarah’s disappearance and delve into the town’s seedier underbelly, but I found it a bit slow and didn’t really care how things panned out.
- Fairly predictable plot. I mostly skimmed the last half of the novel and I wasn’t surprised how it ended, though this may not be the case for everyone.

Another Place is a book that requires two reviews. It requires this one, where we allude to all the greatness that is Another Place in a vague and amusing manner because the book doesn't come out for another two weeks and even though we love talking in spoilers, WE DON'T LOVE SPOILERS BEFORE ANYONE HAS HAD A CHANCE TO READ THE DAMN BOOK.

And it require the review we have yet to type where we discuss all our deeper thoughts on a book which we can't help, but compare to The Deviants.
We're not comparing the two novels because they're carbon copies of one another, but because they're in the same vein of literature.

Another Place and The Deviants are Young Adult Contemporary novels that have honesty and tragedy twined together at their cores.

So, the first thing we noticed was the voice of our narrator Claudette. She has a quality to her voice that gives her life off the page because she's truthful and frank and flawed in her character. She's had years of carrying the weight of hopelessness on her shoulders before we meet her and we think she's quite resilient.

It takes so much inner strength to piece yourself back together again and again knowing that one day sooner or later, you're going to fall apart once more and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

We've seen a great uptake in the depicting of people with bipolar in the last few years. From Shameless US with Ian Gallagher to here with Claudette Flint. We've seen more and more characters battle with depression and we like the fact that we're seeing this. 

We like that we're seeing disorders and mental health on the page and on screen because it's illuminating.

By page thirty three of Another Place, we were tearing up. Our small and shrivelled heart had expanded to feel emotion for a fictional character and it was wonderful in a tear stained, puffy face kind of way.

Don't look at us. We're ugly when we cry.

We're the first ones to complain about the fact that so often Young Adults are smoothed out to an extent that it's hard to see the emotional upheaval and the roller coaster that is teenage life. There's no cursing. No fighting. No close up and frank sexual references and it's a little nauseating seeing such wholesome characters sometimes.

So, we were shocked that we were shocked when we got what we wanted.

Claudette curses. Claudette is brutal and direct. She and her best-friend have barely any boundaries. Claudette tells you what she wants and when she wants it.

She has a love/hate relationship with her Dad's girlfriend that was hilarious because it was so blatantly obvious that the two of them care about each other. There were exchanges of sarcasm and wit and it was immensely refreshing.

This book is quite possibly a five star read and we're saying that having read it weeks ago and forgotten for more than a few hours the other day what and who Another Place was about.

There's so, so much for us to talk about when it comes to what Matthew Crow has written and we'll talk about it all later, in three weeks, when you've opened up your copy and raced through the thing are dying to to talk about all the juicy little details that are practically gossip worthy and make you want to burst.

WE WILL TALK ABOUT ALL OF THAT THEN, BUT FIRST...

LOST GIRLS.

There's an investigation going on in Claudette's hometown because there's a missing girl and terrible secrets hidden under picturesque beach views. There's a missing girl and a race to find her,

But

There's also a race for Claudette to find herself. Interestingly with this book being lost doesn't just mean being physical lost or lost in life. It means both and sometimes, as you'll discover, piecing oneself back together means forgetting the pieces that made you who you were and finding the pieces that will make you someone you probably never expected to be.

(Isn't that just inspirational?)

To conclude, it is in our not at all humble opinion that you need to buy this book and read this book and tell others about this book because we want it to sell well and be received well and we want Kleenex to wonder why so many people are buying boxes of tissues only to discover that all those new customers are bookworms and then for everything to make sense.

Kay? Kay.

Thanks for reading our review!

Arkon, Annie and a creator.