[Review] Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal - Gretchen Schreiber

Summary: Ellie Haycock has always separated her life into sections: Ellie at home and Ellie at the hospital. At home, Ellie is a proud member of her high school’s speech and debate team alongside her best friend and her boyfriend. At the hospital, Ellie has a team of doctors and a mom who won’t stop posting about the details of her illness online. It’s not hard for Ellie to choose which of the two she prefers.

But this latest hospital stay is different. Ellie becomes close with a group of friends, including Ryan, a first-timer who’s still optimistic about the doctors that Ellie stopped trusting years ago. Despite their differences, she can’t seem to keep him out of her head. Ellie’s life has never been ordinary—but maybe this time it will be extraordinary. (Pub Date: Mar 05, 2024)

 

Ellie has had surgeries since forever and while she can't hide her appearance, she can still hide from her friends how bad things still are and all her life during the yearly periods she must stay away for her treatment. Thus, she keeps her life-life friends in one box and her hospital-friends in another. That's until her boyfriend comes for a surprise visit at the family home and finds out she's having another surgery without having told him. Suddenly, she sees that letting those walls fall and people help might be the way to get him back. 

There's a lot to talk about this book, but one thing that never sat well was how half of it seemed to be preaching at me. I wasn't a fan of the tone, and Ellie was already a hard one to like without it. However, from what i could find out about the author, it comes from someone with experience in what Ellie is going through, so there is a lot to learn from Ellie's story too, lots of food for discussion if you're doing a group read. However, it also means the book feels a little like an autobiography, in a way that Ellie's voice mixed with the author's, and I wasn't sure if someone like Ellie would really be saying some of those things. Like there were two Ellies, and while one had a lot to say, one was just insufferable.

And she needed to be for her character's arc. I get that. And yet, I didn't like it. 

The writing isn't very stable, as you can imagine from above. It's still a pleasant read—as it can be considering the theme. It's not sick-girl literature! Our main character happens to have health issues, she happens to be treating them, but this isn't about her being sick, but about her wanting to lead a normal life despite all the adversities. Ultimately, it's a coming of age with a romance on the side. 

I'd say this was lukewarm, but it's a nice story and it raises great points, so I don't regret one bit picking it up.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.