Author: Hollis Seamon
Publication Date: September 3, 2013
Publisher: Algonquin Young Reader
Book Description:
Chemo, radiation, a zillion surgeries, watching my mom age twenty years in twenty months: if that’s part of the Big Dude’s plan, then it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Somebody Up There Hates You.
SUTHY has landed me here in this hospice, where we—that’s me and Sylvie—are the only people under 30 in the whole place, sweartogod. But I’m not dead yet. I still need to keep things interesting. Sylvie, too. I mean, we’re kids, hospice-hostages or not. We freak out visitors; I get my uncle to sneak me out for one insane Halloween night. Stuff like that. And Sylvie wants to make things even more interesting. That girl’s got big plans.
Only Sylvie’s father is so nuclear-blasted by what’s happened to his little girl, he glows orange, I swear. That’s one scary man, and he’s not real fond of me. So we got a major family feud going on, right here in hospice. DO NOT CROSS line running down the middle of the hall, me on one side, her on the other. It’s crazy.
In the middle of all of this, really, there’s just me and Sylvie, a guy and a girl. And we want to live, in our way, by our own rules, in whatever time we’ve got. We will pack in some living before we go, trust me.
Idgie Says:
Algonquin is really hitting the tough subjects on their new Young Adult selection of books and this novel is no exception. This story deals with a teenager dying of cancer and living in hospice.
He no longer eats, he has to get sponge baths and dressing assistance from nurses and he gets as much pain medicine as he wants. Basically, since he's a dying, he no longer has to follow rules.
This could come off as a morbid, deeply depressing downer of a book but it just happens to have an incredibly sarcastic and realistic 17 year old boy as the protagonist. He thinks like a teenage boy, he acts like one, he even gets horny like one. The difference.........he is very aware of his own mortality.
I liked Richard Casey as a person and a teen and would wish him any other existence then the one he's currently in.
I would say this book needs to be for a very mature young adult reader as the content could be fairly scary and confusing for anyone under the age of 15.
Read an excerpt HERE.