WE ARE ALL SO GOOD AT SMILING

Being hospitalized again for suicidal ideation is a bleak situation for anyone, especially Whimsy, a girl with the soul of a poet.

Waiting to go home to parents struggling to connect with her (her older brother has been missing for a decade) and a school where she is one of few Black students, a bright spot appears in Whimsy’s life. Green-haired Faerry—former fellow patient, new neighbor, and an actual Fae—befriends her. After he is lost in the Forest near her home, Whimsy sets off to find him and enters a garden populated by folklore and fairy-tale figures. A witch, a siren, a princess, and ghosts challenge and help her as she and Faerry struggle to escape Sorrow, the sinister entity keeping them from finding their way home. The choice of verse to tell this absorbing story is a strong one; readers are drawn along by the intense and vivid imagery, and the depictions of clinical depression, guilt, and grief are visceral. McBride explores the impact of the intersection between Blackness and mental illness on Faerry and Whimsy and the difficulties of two unusual young people finding refuge through friendship from the pressures the world exerts on them. Whimsy’s practice of Hoodoo and the empowerment she receives from the magic inside and around her help her contend with her depression and unravel her grief without negating a brutal, yet ultimately hopeful, reality.

Important messages uniquely delivered.