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Schau mir in die Augen, Audrey

"Finding Audrey" by Sophie Kinsella tells the story of teenager Audrey who suffers from an anxiety disorder. If you asked me who my favorite author was, I'd usually say Sophie Kinsella. There are very few people that haven't received at least one recommendation from me that was a Kinsella book. With "Finding Audrey", Kinsella makes her YA debut. As a fan of Kinsella's work, I am absolutely disappointed with this. Writing about mental illness is not a game. You have to do lots of research. It's very obvious that Kinsella used Audrey's illness as a plot device. Kinsella's writing style is usually upbeat, funny and sometimes even a little over the top. Paired with a teenager whose anxiety is so severe that she can't even take her sunglasses off at night because she can't stand eye contact, Kinsella's writing makes the story sound ridiculous. The entire novel just feels like joke. Audrey is defined by her illness and oh surprise, she is miraculously cured when a cute boy enters her life. This isn't what happens. Mental illness isn't cured instantaneously. Weren't I such a fan of Kinsella, I wouldn't even have bothered to finish it. I read the whole book hoping to receive some kind of explanation, but there simply is none. In general the novel feels very directionless. The first third is about her brother Frank's video game "addiction" and could have just been summed up in a single chapter. There is no common thread in the plot at all. After about one chapter I realized that "Finding Audrey" is extremely reminiscent of Kinsella's old works written under her real name Madeleine Wickham. These books are also contemporaries and just like this one lack direction (The Gatecrasher, The Wedding Girl). The novel may be advertised as a YA contemporary, but to me it's an adult novel. The focus isn't even on Audrey, but on how her family deals with her illness, especially her mother. I think the novel would have been better off having the parents as the protagonists instead of Audrey. The romance is as instant-love-y as it gets and I don't think it's appropriate for YA, it's more of a MG romance. They meet, they kiss, they fall in love. It's very dull. Overall: Do I Recommend? I read this in about a day. The writing is flawless - it's Kinsella. The plot however just made me upset because of the poor inaccuracy and I imagine that this might be pretty offensive to actual mentally-ill readers. I wouldn't recommend it, simply because I don't support poor research when writing about illness. -