Review Detail

Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. Her mother can barely look at her, her classmates don’t talk to her, her father is in jail for a crime that shook the town. But Aysel knows she’ll never have the courage to go through with her plan alone. She discovers a website with a Suicide Partners section and it seems like the perfect solution. She finds Roman, another teenager who’s haunted by a family tragedy and who’s looking for a partner. It seems perfect. But as the day they agreed upon creeps closer, Aysel is starting to have doubts even as Roman’s resolve has never faltered.

This book shook me as I was reading it. The descriptions of depression, of guilt, of hopelessness, all of it was so hard to read but also very realistic. Knowing that the book was about two teens with a suicide pact, I expected it to be emotional and devastating but I was surprised that the scenes that got to me the most were the happier ones, especially the ones where Aysel didn’t want to ruin things for the others with her depression.

Aysel was such a fantastic character. Definitely one of my favourites. It was impossible not to feel for her. She had so much potential in her, she could be funny and sarcastic, she was smart, she had a love of physics that had even me smiling at the references. This was a girl who could do great things with her life if given the chance but she saw no future for herself. It was sad but also very real.

I also felt a connection to Roman, especially after learning the events of his family tragedy. It was something I could picture easily happening to any family and I could understand the guilt he was carrying around.

There was something very touching and beautiful but so sad about these two characters, who would be so perfect together, only finding each other because they wanted to end their lives, and the way that they saw each other. When Aysel started to question herself and have doubts, I found myself holding my breath. I wanted a happy ending for these two so badly but I was preparing myself for a heartbreak.

The heavy subject matter was handled very sensitively, which was nice to see. The descriptions of how Aysel felt, her struggles with depression, they were so hard to read because they were realistic. There was no sugarcoating the emotions. I felt like this would be a good book to read in high school as there were so many topics one could choose from to write essays, but also just in general because there’s such a stigma associated with mental illness.

I ended up reading this book in a day because I just couldn’t stop reading.