Evie and Her Nightmares is a beautiful, stunning, heart-wrenching read and it was perfect.
This story follows Evie Leigh, picking up at the funeral service for her best friend who suddenly passed away. Alissa committed suicide and now Evie is struggling to figure out how she should be acting at the service. Should she be outwardly sad? Should she be sitting up front with Alissa's family? Evie is autistic and she wants to be blunt and honest with the fact that she doesn't know what to do and this situation makes her want to leave. So she does. Everyone asks how she's feeling but Evie doesn't know how to answer them. While trying to avoid what is going on in her world, she receives a last birthday gift from Alissa, Alissa's set of the Children of Hypnos books. Evie tried to read them once but they didn't appeal to her but now, for the sake of her lost friend, she tries to read them again. Realizing that she loves the story, Evie decides to start playing The Children of Hypnos Online, joining a gaming community that Alissa was also a part of when she was alive. Determined to become the best, Evie devotes all the time she can to this online game, all the while leaving behind the things she used to care about. Evie is skipping track practice, talking back to teachers and letting her grades slip but none of it matters as much as the game. Except the more Evie avoids the real world, the worse it'll be when she is finally forced to face the loss of her best friend.
The world-building in this book is everything you can expect from a high school setting. Evie attends her classes with people who avoid looking at her because they know the loss that she had suffered. They know that Alissa should be with her but she isn't and because of the way she died, everyone would rather avoid the situation altogether instead of paying her any attention. The school is filled with everyone you expected to see and that you used to know in school, from the sympathetic teachers to the hateful classmates that use Alissa as a way to insult Evie. This book perfectly captured that sense of being a teenager and struggling with making choices for the future all the while knowing the struggles that will come with college and finding a job and everything else after that. Which brings in the why about what Alissa did and how different characters, including Evie, are trying to find the reason that drove Alissa to what she did. My heart hurt wandering the school halls with Evie, visiting Alissa's house, hiding in Evie's room while she played online and sitting in the room while Evie tried to start therapy. Everything felt real and because it felt real, it hurt to see Evie avoiding reality. This world felt like opening a window into someone's life and watching all the pieces falling and moving as the story developed.
My lovely, brutally honest Evie, you are one of the best examples of autism I've seen in a book in recent memory. I recognized so many aspects of people I know in this character and for that, I loved her. I found her grief to be authentic and her reactions to the people around her to be incredibly realistic. I was right there with her when she talked back to a teacher and when she fought back against an incredibly rude classmate. I felt her struggle to find a way to interact with Alissa's parents all while not knowing how to stop from making things worse with anything she said or did. I found it interesting that the other character we learned more about, besides Alissa in Evie's memories, was Ash, Alissa's older brother. Ash as a character was someone who was in Evie's corner, feeling her anger and her grief at Alissa's loss and searching for answers. Literally, the moment these two characters really interacted involved the two of them bumping into each other where Alissa was found, because they each thought that it was possible they could find something that Alissa left behind, something that could give them some answers. As the story developed, I appreciated how much effort Ash put into comforting Evie when she needed help and how in turn, Evie became someone Ash could confide in as well. I also adored the fact that Ash was a Monstrous Sea fan. That automatically made me want to help him to be happy along with my dear Evie.
As for the themes of the book, the idea of loss and grief and the effects it has on people, the word that kept circling in my mind was kintsugi. Kintsugi is the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken things, ceramic cups and bowls, with gold or sometimes some other substance, all to show that just because they were broken, it's not the end. The cracks are celebrated, showing a story about the history of the piece. The scars are something to be celebrated and admired, and if the term is applied to people, can show resilience. This word kept going around and around in my head, especially when I thought as I opened this book that I was ready to get my heart broken and put together again while reading this story which reminded me of the term. Kintsugi stayed with my thoughts along with the idea that Evie and Ash, and Ash's parents, and Evie's mom, had all gone through some kind of devastating loss, they had become broken, and they were learning, or had learned, how to fit their broken pieces back together, to make themselves whole again. Watching Evie learn to be more authentic, to be able to say what she wanted and not necessarily be the people pleaser she claimed to have been, all helped with showing how she was remaking herself. Who was Evie without the best friend she thought would always be by her side? What did Evie have to live for and what was it that made Alissa feel like she couldn't stay?
Zappia also adds in the usual adults who don't how to talk about suicide and the adults who dare to judge a girl because she didn't ask for help before she made the decision that she made. All of this highlights how difficult it is to understand the complexities of suicide, showing how many people will never know why someone killed themselves or even if there was anything they could have done that would have made a difference. At the same time, there are no answers given, and that helps with the idea that grief and loss and growing up is different for everyone. No one knows for sure what is going on in someone else's mind but these characters, my dear Evie, are learning what they need to continue on and that lesson is a good one to learn. The book ends on the note of hope of acceptance and it made me cry when I read those last words.
In the end, I truly, sincerely loved and adored this book. If you're a fan of Eliza, you'll find a new favorite with this release. Evie's struggles and her hope for the future are something to be admired and I, for one, am so grateful that this book exists.
Rating on my Scale: All the Stars in the World or 10 Glowing Stars!! Now when I talk about a book you just have to read, it will either be Eliza and Her Monsters or Evie and Her Nightmares. Here's hoping we might see something else from this world again in the future. You never know what the future might hold, after all.
My thanks to Netgalley, HarperCollins Children's Books, Greenwillow Books and Francesca Zappia for the eARC of this book in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.
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