Letters from Real Teens answered with Care by 19 Different Authors.
Contributing authors:
Becky Albertalli, Adi Alsaid, Libba Bray, Mike Curato, Heather Demetrios, Amy Ewing, Zach Fehst, Gayle Forman, Corey Ann Haydu, Varian Johnson, A.S. King, Nina LaCour, Kim Liggett, Kekla Magoon, Sarah McCarry, Sandhya Menon, Cristina Moracho, Jasmine Warga, and Ibi Zoboi.
Trigger Warning: Mental Illnesses, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault.
I give this book 3.5 stars (out of five). I personally really loved the concept of authors answering letters to Heartbreak from teenagers, I liked that it was anonymous and how each author had a different approach in their answer and shared their own personal experiences.
This is another of the nonfiction books that I’ve started to read and enjoy more recently. In the past I’ve struggled to find things that were at a good reading level for me and weren’t either for kids or adults, so finding good quality nonfiction books specifically written for teenagers and young adults is great.
This book really opened my eyes as to how everyone has different romantic experiences. I’m in high school and I’ve had a few young and non-lasting relationships but I never realized that other people around my age were dying for romance or basing their self worth on their romantic attractiveness. I didn’t realize that was a big deal for some people because it isn’t for me but I found this book to be pretty informative to the experiences of other people around my age and of the authors.
This does discuss hard topics like mental health, domestic abuse, sexual assault and more so I think it would be better to have a bit of a disclaimer and include some resources. I will give another warning that it’s definitely sad at many different parts.
I really liked that it wasn’t limited by gender or sexuality so it can be a lot more inclusive and the flower imagery throughout as that is a symbol frequently related to romance. I also want to highlight the inclusion of a letter than just said, “F*ck you” and still had a lengthy response.
Overall I greatly enjoyed reading this book and getting personal insight into many different experiences. As a young person who is pretty inexperienced when it comes to romance reading this was very interesting.