Sad Perfect by Stephanie Elliot Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“You wish so much that you could enjoy food the way others do. But you can’t because something is there, stuck in your throat-a monster, guarding its castle, your body, and it won’t let the stuff go down.”- Sad Perfect, Stephanie Elliot

The story of a teen girl's struggle with Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder and how love helps her on the road to recovery.

Sixteen-year-old Pea looks normal, but she has a secret: she has Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID). It is like having a monster inside of her, one that not only dictates what she can eat, but also causes anxiety, depression, and thoughts that she doesn’t want to have. When she falls crazy-mad in love with Ben, she hides her disorder from him, pretending that she’s fine. At first, everything really does feel like it’s getting better with him around, so she stops taking her anxiety and depression medication. And that's when the monster really takes over her life. Just as everything seems lost and hopeless, Pea finds in her family, and in Ben, the support and strength she needs to learn that her eating disorder doesn’t have to control her.

I initially picked up this book shortly after Paperweight, but instead got an intense craving for mystery-thrillers and abandoned it in favor of one of those. I came back to this book after I realized that thrillers aren't exactly the best choices when you're trying to claw your way out of a slump before you've been sucked all the way in. I mean, the last time I fell into a slump and couldn't get back out in time I barely read anything for like two years. But I'm getting distracted. 

I found myself distracted a lot while reading this book. I don't know, I just never really felt compelled to pick it up. What should have been a light read to clear my mind ended up taking me like 2 days to read, which is pretty bad for a freaking 300 page book. I mean, this thing isn't Lolita, which was the same length but took me days to finish because Nabokov is an excellent writer but not a very concise one. Needless to say, Stephanie Elliot is not Nabokov, though in her defense she isn't trying to be. I don't really have any excuses for taking the time I took to read this book, I guess, except slump.

I want to start off by talking about the most unique aspect of this book, by far, and that is its point of view. I don't know if I mentioned before, I might have in my We, the Drowned review, but I love unique points of view. I love when books experiment with different ways of telling stories, and have read several successful books that make use of first person plural. Sad Perfect makes use of the elusive second person singular. This was a bold choice. There's a reason why second person singular isn't used often, and that is because, simply put, it's hard. It's hard not only to successfully write it but and also have it make sense with the plot. There are insanely talented veteran authors who can't pull it off. 

So does this book succeed? In my opinion, no. For a variety of reasons, one of which being that, as with all POVs, but especially the not as common ones, you need a reason to choose second person. Whenever authors are trying to decide what point of view to use, they should take a good long look at what kind of story they want to write and which POV would work best. I've dabbled in second person (wow, I sound like I take myself super-seriously there), and find it particularly useful when writing description. In my opinion, second person works best in small doses- short stories or novellas-, with lengthy descriptions of towns and their denizens or character studies or any story really when the narrator is not necessarily the focus of the novel or the narrator is perhaps young and/or disconnected from what is going on around him. It doesn't seem like Elliot had a particular reason why she wanted to go with second person, except that it was interesting and original and would hopefully set her book apart from other eating disorder books. I suppose maybe she thought the choice of second person would mimic how Pea feels disconnected from her disease, like how Shusterman used second person briefly in Challenger Deep to show that Caden's mental disorder has escalated to the point where he can no longer differentiate between himself and the rest of the world, but if that was the case in Elliot's book she would have changed POVs by the end of the novel.

My second main reason why this didn't work is that Elliot simply doesn't have the talent for second person, at least not yet. She seems to think that second person means inserting you wherever I would fit. As a result, half the time reading I found myself subconsciously inserting I in place of you. Because I didn't feel like I was in Pea's shoes at all. Pea had this odd mix of characterization, where I felt like I knew just enough about her that I couldn't relate, but not enough to particularly feel any which way about her. Half the time when reading I would see a statement like "you're too tall" or something along those lines I would think for a split second "no I'm not" before remembering I was reading a book. Maybe I couldn't relate to Pea because there was too much physical description and also the way she acted was just not me. Because I'm not tall, cute perfect boys don't just magically materialize to fall in love with me, and I would rather rip my teeth out than watch The Fault in Our Stars (I would have chosen Annie Hall, because Harold and Maude isn't exactly first date material). Half the time, I think in this book I must have an amazing rack, because why else would someone that perfect be flirting with me? It's strange in that Elliot gave us a lot of physical description, some observations as to how we are supposed to feel as Pea, but almost no personality. I get that we're probably supposed to insert our own personality, but I don't know. It just didn't work, and again I kept thinking that I would never act like that or I would never say that. I wasn't a very good sixteen year old girl when I was a sixteen year old girl. I don't have an Instagram and I always feel so fake whenever I try to use slang, like a 40 year old mom trying to act cool around her teenagers (what is it that you kids say now? On fleck? Is that still a thing?). I think the only thing I could relate to was how Pea hated both The Catcher in the Rye and Harry Potter, two things that rarely get hate and I appreciate it when they do.

The reason why I devoted so much of this review to talking about everything from second person point of view to Lolita is because I really can't remember much else about this book, and it's only been a day since I finished it. The only other two things I remember is that I liked the very different take on eating disorders- I didn't know much about avoidant food disorder- and still don't even after reading-, but what little information we got was interesting, and the love interest sucked. He was literally perfection, to the point where I was expecting some kind of flaw, some catch that would turn the tables on him by the end of the novel. That never happened. 

I also remember not being too thrilled with the way mental hospitals were portrayed in the book. In fact, several times during those chapters I thought "Christ, what is this, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest?". I'm always a bit wary when things like medication or mental hospitals are shown in a villainous light, because I don't think it's the best idea to have that image in the minds of teenagers who may be struggling with extremely serious mental issues. I'm talking more along the lines of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, who absolutely need those resources to stay sane. I don't think authors really realize the unfortunate implications behind this portrayal, but that's something I honestly believe needs to change in YA lit. 

So that's Sad Perfect, a book that, if I'm being honestly, I'll probably forget about. I don't think I should have read this book at this time. But at the same time, I can't see myself going back to this book. Instead, I'd recommend picking up JJ Johnston's Believarexic, one of the best books on this topic I've ever read, with a great message to boot. 

7 out of 10