Suicide Notes

Let me start off by saying, this was a phenomenal book. It was funny, the characters were all likeable and believable, the description and actual writing was great, it was just an all around great book. Let me also say this has some very mature themes in it, such as sex, language, and creepy, morbid death/suicide, though it isn't depressing. It describes his graphic sexual encounters with the other patients, as well. SPOILERS! One of them is a dude.

In “Suicide Notes”, Jeff tried to kill himself and he wakes up in the Psych ward of a mental hospital. His 45 day program doesn't allow him to leave the ward until his “sentence”, as he calls it, is up. There he meets Sadie, Bone, Alice, and Juliet. Eventually, Bone leaves and Sadie kills herself, so two other patients move in. Before those things happen, he goes about his routines for about two-thirds of the book, and then the “juicy” stuff starts to happen. That's also when Rankin, Bone's replacement shows up. Coincidence? Rankin starts bringing back feelings of why he killed himself. Jeff has sex with Rankin, and it goes into detail about the “encounters” let's call them. During his third, Juliet freaks out. It's not because she walked in on them having sex, but she finds Sadie dead after she OD'ed on some pills. After Rankin is sent away for harassing Jeff, Jeff finally starts actually talking to his therapist. Then, he remembers why he tried to kill himself, because he found out he was gay. That was my main pet peeve with this, was that one cliché. “Oh, I'm gay so I have to kill myself. No one can know.” Yes, I know it happens, but that is the one thing that's in almost every story about a gay teenager.

I really enjoyed this book. It was just the way he told it, from Jeff's perspective. He told it with sarcasm and snarkiness. He just did it really well.

Words of Wisdom: Go and buy it. It's a phenomenal book and it's really funny. It only starts dealing with homosexuality about two-thirds in and gives no real indicators the Jeff is gay until he wakes up naked, with Rankin, naked as well, next to him.