A Semi Definitive List of Worst Nightmares
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- 5,99 €
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- 5,99 €
Publisher Description
A funny, moving love story about facing fears hand in hand - one snake/spider/potentially unstable fourth-floor balcony at a time. From acclaimed author of OUR CHEMICAL HEARTS, Krystal Sutherland.
Esther Solar's family is . . . unusual. Her father hasn't left the basement in six years. Her brother is terrified of darkness.
Esther isn't afraid of anything - because she avoids pretty much everything. Elevators are off limits, as are open spaces, crowds, family pets, birds, needles, haircuts, dolls and mirrors.
But when Esther is pickpocketed by her cocky old classmate Jonah Walker, Esther and Jonah become surprising friends. Jonah sets a challenge: every week they must work their way through the world's fifty most common phobias. Skydiving, horse riding, beekeeping, public speaking, reptilehouses - they plan to do it all.
Soon their weekly foray into fear becomes the only thing that keeps them tethered to reality, and to each other. But each is keeping a secret from the other, a secret that threatens to rip them apart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Each member of 17-year-old Esther Solar's family is consumed by a different fear. Terrified to leave the house, her father has holed himself up in the basement for six years. Her mother, a believer in ghosts and bad luck, has become addicted to gambling. And due to Esther's twin brother's intense fear of the dark, their house is lit 24/7. Esther believes that her family's propensity for these phobias stems from a curse bestowed on her grandfather years ago, and she dreads discovering a latent terror that will overtake her. Then Jonah, an elementary school acquaintance turned pickpocket, offers to help Esther confront and conquer 50 fears on a list she has assembled. In a darkly ironic tale about an offbeat dysfunctional family, Sutherland (Our Chemical Hearts) gives mixed messages about fate, death, and mental disorders; the supernatural elements of the novel feel incongruous beside Esther's growing understanding of psychological illnesses and her tendency to hide her true self from the world. Though some characters undergo various forms of salvation, the book's resolution is unsettling. Ages 14 up.
