Review: Me on the Floor, Bleeding by Jenny Jägerfeld

Title: Me on the Floor, Bleeding
Author: Jenny Jägerfeld
Format: ARC
Publisher: Stockholm Text
Publish Date: July 2, 2013
Source: I received a copy from the PR; however, this did not affect my review.

Why You're Reading This Book:

• You're a YA fiction fan.
• You don't mind tough subjects.

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Award-winning novel: Best novel for young adults, Sweden
An accidentally sawed off thumb throws the reader right into high school-outsider Maja's journey in pursuit of identity. With a suddenly disappeared mom and and a reluctant crush on the boy next door, this spring nothing turns out as Maja has imagined."

My Two Cents:

"Me on the Floor Bleeding" is a coming of age story of Maja, a teenager who is dealing with a lot. Her parents are estranged. Her dad seems distant from her and has a secret life that he fails to hide from Maja. Maja's mother has disappeared without a trace and she may also be hiding something from Maja. This is a great young adult novel (probably most fit for older YA readers) that deals with tough subjects!

A constant theme of YA books seems to be the non-communication between teens and adults, usually parents. This is definitely in play in this book. But this book is a little bit deeper than that. It also tackles mental health issues, a very important subject.

I felt for Maja. Not only do both of her parents have issues (her mother in particular is dealing with something huge). Maja seems like a huge ball of anxiety and emotion throughout the book. She is dealing with her own issues and the trouble with her parents adds on to her stress in a major way. Since the story is told from Maja's point of view, you really get to see the roiling emotions that she's going through.

The writing in the book was pretty good. I really liked how the author was able to capture Maja's emotions. They seemed really true to life and multi-faceted. Overall, this was a really good story!