When My Heart Joins the Thousand review

352 pages

Published February 6th 2018 by HarperTeen

This book…I don’t even know where to start. It was everything you should read. I’m going to go ahead and say it is up there with my favorite books of the year so far.

This book follows Alvie, a seventeen-year-old girl with Asperger syndrome living on her own awaiting the day when she can legally be called an adult. Going outside of her comfort zone, she strikes up a friendship with a boy who suffers from a condition called osteogenesis imperfecta. In simple terms, he has fragile bones that break easily. Such an disease can also cause hearing loss among other permanent conditions. Both are trying to live normal lives the best they can and deal with the fact that both are not perfect and will never be normal socially. Also, Alvie’s favorite book is Watership Down. Did I mention how awesome that it?

All I  have learned about Asperger’s I have learned from television shows and movies. This opened my eyes a lot to what people go through. The panic attacks, the depression, and not to mention the suffering of people around those who have Aspberger’s. Alvie lost her mother at a young ago and blames herself. It’s something that will dig into your chest and rip out your heart.

This book is one that may not get a lot of attention and I hope to change that at least a little. I have never met a character so in love with the same book (Watership Down) as I am and always will be and I connected right away to her. The chills I got when reading my favorite line from the book, “My heart has joined the Thousand for my friend stopped running today.”

Full on sobbing tears.

So, read this book if you can and also, while we’re at it, read Watership Down because you will not find a more raw and beautiful book if you tried. Well, by my opinion of course.

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”