Cursed by Karol Ruth Silverstein is a great YA #ownvoices read about being a teen with a chronic illness. The story is inspired by the author's own health experiences making this one all the more real in describing what the main character goes through. The story focuses on Erica "Ricky" Bloom. Ricky has been newly diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. She is also starting at a new school. When the story begins, Ricky has straight up stopped going to school (unbeknownst to her parents) because it was just too much to navigate. Right off the bat, it subtlety speaks to how systems and processes can be exhaustive and exclusive. Eventually, she is found out, and she has to learn how to navigate the school, including her classmates, her teachers (especially missed work), and the building itself. Her parents are also recently separated, so she's managing this new normal. Finally, she's managing her care. One of the pieces I appreciated about this dimension of the story is the way they talked about finding the right doctor. She seamlessly wove into the story the importance of having comfortability with provider even for teens. I overall appreciated reading a story about a character with an identity that isn't often spotlighted. Ricky also just had this cynical sense of humor that I really dug. Overall, this book so wonderfully shared the struggles of chronic illness, as well as how Ricky learns to navigate all the things happening in her life. This one won't be out until June (once again, NetGalley allowed me the early view), and this will be one that you'll want to be sure to check out.

I want to thank Netgalley for providing me an Arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This book was awesome.
I will be honest and say some parts were hard to read because of bullying.
I loved our main character I felt like I was going on this journey with her and I really loved it.
She was so real and in pain I just wanted her to get better.
Oliver is defiantly my favourite character I honestly loved him and his story made me cry.
Overall I’m now obsessed with this book and think everyone needs to read it. 5 well deserved stars.

I wanted to review this book after seeing the main character surfers from a chronic illness, totally relatable to myself in some ways.



Only I suffer from fibromyalgia and other rheumatoid illnesses where as Erica or Ricky suffers with severe arthritis at just fourteen causing her to skip school and struggle with daily life from waking to sleeping, all day is a struggle to walk and be in endless pain.



As she deals with her parents divorce and her health she loses her way with school work, has to stand up to bullies, find new friends and become less colourful with her anger language of cursing!



As she gets tutored after school and makes friends with Ollie and Julio her crush grows but will she realise on who in time as well as finally getting her separated parents to listen to get about how she feels?



It was a good book, however I can't help but feel that Erica didn't actually curse that much, I felt and expected her to be more frustrated than she was given the title and would be liked to have had her mum more features in the whole book as she didn't a lot but then again Erica does try to be fully independent. But for the chronic pain and illness side of things it was fully realistic and accurate and it's great to see chronic pain featuring in a young adult book for once at last too!



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

This was an awesome read. It was definitely refreshing to read a diverse book starting a teen who was recently diagnosed with a disability and upset about it Ricky and Oliver were so cute togetjer. I really liked Ricky.