I had a hard time getting into this story. It seemed to drag for me and I couldn't connect to the characters at all.

DNF'ed because of this review:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2341174421?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

Incredible read. So descriptive and it pulls you in right from the very first sentence. This had a bit of fantasy, bit of romance and a lot of drama. This made for a really enjoyable read. Would highly recommend.

Losing Adam is a bittersweet exploration of love between two young adults stepping into a new era in their lives, complicated by the onset of mental illness. Jenny and Adam are high school sweethearts going to Cornell together for college, their lives planned out ahead of them. However, things fall apart as Adam starts to hear voices that turn him from a friendly theater kid into a paranoid, volatile recluse. And Jenny is helpless to save him.

The story draws a lot of parallels to the fairytale of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. I imagine that I might have appreciated the story more if I'd been more familiar with the tale, but as things were, a fair amount of symbolism was lost on me. That being said, the allusions to the wintery tale resulted in some beautifully lush writing.

I was left feeling very conflicted about both Jenny and Adam. Jenny's codependence on Adam is understandable albeit frustrating, and I spent much of the book being more upset with her than I would've liked. I did feel sympathy for her, as I did for Adam, but her perspective exhausted me. Alas, perhaps there is merit in that she was able to make me feel utterly helpless to stop the world from falling apart around her.

And while a tale like this doesn't necessarily have a lot of room for side characters, I wish I'd gotten more of Zoe and Ian and even Geoff. I especially wanted more from the parents, who have deeply shaped Jenny and Adam into the people they are today.

I actually rather liked the ending, although I wasn't sure that a lot of it was justified. Jenny's fight to rediscover herself after Adam needed to be more drawn out, and her relationship with Zoe didn't feel believable to me. I do appreciate that the story ends with the hopeful note, though, that while mental illness might affect a person moving forward, they can still hope for a better future.

In Loosing Adam Jenny and Adam must deal with the reality that mental illness is real and can change their life.
The book follows both Jenny and Adam as they deal with the fact that Adam has a mental illness. As it manifests when they go to college, Adam's deterioration is scary for Jenny and her over-dependence on Adam hurts both of them. How will they learn to live a life they never saw coming?
The adam chapters are ae the best here. While I don't have the same mental illness, I know what it's like for your rain to lie to you. Adam's preoccupation with the Snow Queen comes to a dangerous crossroads that finally gets him help. Meanwhile, Jenny's chapters are mostly blah. She is so overly dependent on her boyfriend and her wanting Adam is to get well depends on her. And that bothered me. Even the person Adam thought was on his side was selfishly acting for her good.
The book ends on what should be upbeat. It's rushed and not very realistic. While I'm glad we ended with some light for Adam, Jenny's "friend" line pissed me off and I felt even worse for Adam.
Overall, this isn't a book I would recommend to truly understand mental illness as it spends too much time on those other than the one afflicted.

Losing Adam is a story that showcases the heartbreaking effects of mental illness. Jenny and Adam are high school sweethearts. They are starting their first year of college together. They are finally on their own.

Jenny notices a difference in Adam from the beginning. His mood and attitude have completely changed. He is cold and quick to anger. Jenny is concerned about drugs. What she doesn’t know is that Adam is hearing voices in his head. The voice of the Snow Queen from Jenny’s favorite fairytale.

Will Adam reach out and get help before he does something he can’t undo? This book was very well written and the characters are easy to form an attachment to. I read this book in one sitting.

Losing Adam

What happens when the person you love most in the world suddenly becomes a stranger? Adam and Jenny’s world is falling apart. Their dream of attending college together away from home quickly becomes a nightmare when Adam begins hearing the voice of the Snow Queen. Adam’s startling transformation from popular drama student into a withdrawn, suspicious stranger leaves Jenny frightened and confused. How can the person she loves most in the world suddenly become someone she doesn’t recognize? As Adam drifts farther and farther away into the Snow Queen’s mysterious world of ice and snow, Jenny believes she must fight to bring him back or risk losing him forever. Vividly narrated by Adam and Jenny, the struggle to understand the impact of Adam’s mental illness, forces both characters on a journey of self-discovery that leads to understanding about life’s uncertainty, the power of first love, and the pain of letting go.

It’s a short YA read at 217 pages. It was an easy read - managed in one sitting and it didn’t bore me. Though I feel the mental health issue could have been portrayed better as well as the relationship between Adam and Jenny. 📚

I tend to love books about mental health, and this one was good but not one of my favorites. Jenny and Adam meet in high school and go away to college together, assuming they will stay a couple. But when Adam suddenly begins to hear voices and loses focus, it's clear that something sinister is in play. Jenny tries her hardest to help her boyfriend, but his odd behavior both draws her to him and drives her away. Clearly he needs the kind of professional help that only doctors can provide. I never completely connected with the characters or their dysfunctional families, but it certainly touches your heartstrings!

The take on mental illness in this story was great. The writing was good and the characters interesting enough.
I just missed some more emotion in the writing, it felt a bit too clinical.
But overall it is a wonderful and tragic story.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for letting me read this book.

This book is told from Adam and Jenny’s point of view. We get to see what Adam goes through as he starts hearing voices, having headaches and seeing things. It’s scary because Adam doesn’t know what’s happening to him and he only tells Jenny about the headaches. He tells the nurse and doctor about the headaches but not about the voices or hallucinations.
Jenny is a young woman who is in love with Adam and she wants to help him. She doesn’t tell anyone about what he’s going through and that doesn’t help Adam. It’s
I couldn’t even begin to understand what either of them is going through. It has to be really scary to go from someone who is perfectly healthy to slowly losing yourself.
It has to be hard on not only Adam but also those around him who know and love him. And we see just how much they are affected by everything.
I liked the last few chapters the best because we get to see and feel what he’s going through and Adam’s mom writes Jenny a letter that’s very emotional because it says what she as a mother is going through.
I enjoyed the epilogue because it shows what Jenny and Adam are up to and how much Adam’s life has changed.

My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.
This is a New Adult novel, set in the 1990's, about Adam and Jenny who have been together throughout high school, and who are looking forward to the freedom of going to college together. Each of them have less than ideal homes. Jenny's father drinks and her parents argue all the time. Adam's father is demanding and controlling and when Adam starts exhibiting signs of schizophrenia, he is doubtful that his son is really mentally ill at all.
When Adam's hallucinations about the Snow Queen cause him to hurt himself, he finally gets the medical attention that he needs, and a proper diagnosis and medication. Jenny is heartbroken and college is not the same without him. Jenny writes to Adam, telling him that she still loves him, and always will.
I had a hard time relating to Jenny and Adam.. The writing style was so distancing, and the pace and flow of this story was continuously bogged down with minor details or background material that the author felt it necessary to keep inserting in the narrative.
At one point, Jenny's mother encourages her daughter to move on, comparing her own difficult marriage to Jenny's father, who was a lifelong alcoholic.
" I know you love Adam, but you can't fix this for him. Believe me, if I thought I could stop Dad's drinking...... All I'm saying is that you can't save someone else. Not from something like this." Then they go and make chili. This was the sort of thing that messed up the flow of the story for me. Sometimes I felt that the story was being written for middle school readers - the language was just too basic. But here and there would be a few hidden gems. The Epilogue is the best part of this novel - for me, at least.
I'd give this a 3.5, because of the serious subject matter and that fact that so few fiction novels are written on this subject.

Jenny and Adam are a young couple just starting out on their first year at college. Its a big adventure, with a lot of change from their small town life , and when Adam begins to complain of headaches and starts to withdraw, Jenny is worried. Despite encouraging him to seek medical help, the situation continues to get worse - Adam becomes moody , irritable and paranoid , and eventually hurts himself. All he tells Jenny is that the voice in his head, the "Snow Queen" told him to do it. Finally forced to seek treatment by his worried family, Adam learns that he has schizophrenia and begins taking medication to try to get his life back on track. Meanwhile Jenny has let her coursework slide, too busy worrying about Adam, and when he is forced to withdraw from school for the sake of his health, the separation, though difficult , forces her to take stock of her own needs and what is really important to her.
I loved that we were given both perspectives, seeing events from the outside as Jenny and then learning what was going on in Adam's head at the same time worked really well to show how distorted his thinking had become. I also thought it was really important that the author emphasized that Jenny could not "save " Adam, he needed to take charge of his own recovery. As a long time fan of the story of the Snow Queen, I also loved how that tale was woven into the book. The depiction of Adam's illness was raw and vivid and disturbingly accurate.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I read this book relatively quickly, however, something just didn't sit right with me. The writing style was very good and I like the story from Jenny's point of view, but Adam's point of view was just very disturbing to me. Now I have never really read anything about mental health/illness so that could be the reason why I struggled a bit or it could be that i recognise it as a very good representation. I just don"t really know what I think about that certain subject. I really like Jenny's character and Adam's was okay but he always seemed cloudy, now I realise it could be because he is ill but his hallucinations just felt a bit weird.
I really enjoyed the representation of student life, I am a full time student myself and see myself in Jenny, so I really appreciated this aspect.
This story starts with a couple (Jenny and Adam) going to college and Adam getting slowly more and more confused until he finds out, many months down the line that he has schizoprenia. It also follows both characters' struggles in their respective day to day lives and how hard it is for Jenny to come to terms that Adam is changing and that their relationship is no longer what it used to be or what she would like it to be in the future.
I think it is an important book to read because of the mental health subject but I think maybe the reason I was blocked a bit in my reading experience was the parallel story with the Snow Queen, I didn't really find it realistic, obviously, I am not mentally ill but I found it slightly hard to believe or picture. I did really enjoy the author's writing and would like to read other books she has written.
I suppose the reason why I felt it is a bit iffy is simply because of the touchy subject but that should not deter you from reading it because i generally did really enjoy the story, and especially the end. I gave it 3,75 stars out of 5.

I wanted to love it but I just didn't. The idea of this book is so beautifully heartbreaking and soul wrenching, but it missed its mark with me. Adam's situation is supposed to be sad...but where is all the emotion? I didn't have a genuine care for the characters and found Jenny to be selfish and annoying. I think if she whined a little less, I would be more interested in the book, but I hate how her attitude completely overshadowed Adam's mental illness. The setting is great, the story line is great, but I feel that the characters could use some more depth to turn it into more of a page turner.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

This story was really good. There was a few times I found myself skimming with details, but the take it took on mental illness was so good.

This story has a deep dark side along with a fairy tale.
Adam is starting college and is into drama and stage plays. He is very intelligent and comes from a nice home with a strict father. He meets Jenny and loves her from the moment he sets eyes on her. She is going to the same college and they make great plans together for when they both finally leave home. Then Adam life gets completely turned around when he starts hearing voices, in particular the voice of the Snow Queen. His whole demeanor changes and he seems to turn away from Jenny who is both hurt and mystified.
This story takes us on Adam's sad and troubling journey, his diagnosis and how it completely changed him.

*Thank you Netgalley for this arc.*

I had to DNF this. I wasn't really connecting to the characters at all and so it was hard for me to continue. I read about 30 or so pages in and really I didn't know anything about the characters other than:

Adam loves theater and acting and wants to be an actor.
Jenny...worked backstage on plays working with costume management and that's how they both met. She likes to read.

That's pretty much all I know. I'll be talking about my view *from the parts that I read, not the parts that I didn't read* So if something is later explained but hasn't been explained yet, that's why I've mentioned it.

As far as the beginning of the book, Jenny is super dependent on Adam. It's like she can't do anything properly if he isn't around and that's super annoying. She couldn't even sit through a college orientation meeting without him cause she felt like something was off.

Also, we are clearly told about what Adam wants to do and it's pretty obvious he must be in college preparing to work toward acting whereas, with Jenny, we don't even know what she wants to do or why she is at college other than she wanted to be there with Adam. Of course.

We know that Jenny's parents fight all the time so why they are still together is beyond me but we know nothing at all about Adam's parents or what his home life was like.

Adam's illness seems to spring up out of nowhere and this part I didn't like. It didn't seem realistic to me. I feel like the build-up should have been gradual or already existent prior to when we are introduced to it. We are told when he starts feeling weird in his dorm room but he was clearly irritated before that happened so it had to have been before that even though he says that's when it started.

The story has just confused me a bit so far and it's very shallow. Not in depth at all and I couldn't even reach far into the story to learn more about the mental illness part but I've heard it's more a story on how obsessive Jenny is for Adam and her wanting him back for herself other than just wanting him to be better in general.

It starts out as an average teen romance but then turns very real as the subject of mental illness is portrayed. An important book that realistically captures how loved ones have to deal with a disease that we still don’t know much about. I’ve had to deal with this in my own life and I really appreciate how this author was careful yet precise on how she describes what Adam is going through. It was painful for me to read (some parts) because my son didn’t survive his battle. I really hope this book gets the attention it deserves. The opportunity to open any dialogue is priceless. Thank you for this book.

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

I really enjoyed this book.
This is such a touching and heartfelt story.
It really draws a picture of mental illness in an extremely compassionate and caring way.
Adam was an amazing character I found myself fighting for him the whole way through the book.
I give it 4 stars.