Book Freak: A Million Little Snowflakes by Logan Byrne

26 October 2013

A Million Little Snowflakes by Logan Byrne - Book Review

Oliver Hurst has always been abnormally normal.

His grades are horrible, his best friend just left for Utah, and he's depressed. His overly religious parents don’t help, especially since they control every facet of his life. One stupid sentence said in desperation gets Oliver tossed in an adolescent psych ward, where his depression and fears become even more of a reality.

When Oliver meets snide, tough girl Lacey Waters he doesn't think his life could get any better, that is, until she becomes the ray of sunshine he has desperately needed on his cloudiest of days.

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MY REVIEW -

Meet Oliver Hurst – an ordinary boy, with an extraordinary family. He has a lot on his plate nowadays – his grades were sorta low, his best friend had left town, his SAT scores came in and he wasn’t sure if there was any college who would accept those kinds of scores. Pressure was building up from his overachiever father and uber-religious mother. One single sentence made out of desperation and frustration had him admitted in an adolescent psych ward.

He didn’t think his life could get even better. He was away from his controlling mother, he didn’t feel any pressure, he met different kinds of people in his stay at the ward, and for a boy who finds it hard to formed friendship – he gains a new weird group of friends. Then he meets Lacey Waters – a girl with a troubled past who doesn’t let anyone in, until him. She was different, she has issues, but the more they spend time with each other – the more he liked her. For a boy who was admitted reluctantly in a psychiatric ward: this experience may turn out to be the best part of his life.

I hate his mother – she was controlling, super-religious and she was the kind of woman would have her kid exorcised if he does something out of the ordinary. I wanted to shake some senses into her. His father, however, was a different story. Yes, he was the one who brought him in the ward, but he was an amazing dad who goes to visit him when it was time, asking for his well-being, and finally when he grew the balls, told his wife that she should leave Oliver alone.

My favorite part was the therapy Oliver was supposed to have with his psychiatrist and his mother – it was EPIC!!!! I was laughing so hard, and I could just imagine their faces (but in reality, actually, it’s was not mentally healthy for a patient to witness the outbursts). It was needed for Oliver to finally come clean and tell his mother about what he really feels. They may not have fully reconciled in the ending – which makes it more real, (She couldn’t change her ways in one snap of a finger!), but at least he let her know about his thoughts of the way she treats him.

Ten days isn’t really long, but for someone who spends his day inside an institution – it might have been decades doing the same scheduled things over and over again. Oliver had learned, and changed a lot during his stay. He came in awkward, depressed, a young boy – he’s going out different: a young man, happy and content. After ten days, he was sent home – and just when everything seems perfect, and he’s about to get his life back, his family together, and the girl of his dreams, everything crumbles.

Logan Byrne wrote a story that will give you a glimpse of the life inside a psych ward, different people with different personalities and problems, but just the same. It was beautiful, touching, unexpected, surprising, and fun. This is my first time to read anything from Logan Byrne, and I must admit, he caught me off guard, the ending left me a little speechless. I just finished reading A Million Little Snowflakes – while I had fun reading it, my heart is still aching from reading the ending.