When My Heart Joins the Thousand: An Emotional Debut YA Romance About Autistic and Chronically Ill Teens Finding Hope - Hardcover

Steiger, A. J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062656473 ISBN 13: 9780062656476

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2018

Synopsis

A heartbreaking debut YA romance featuring a neuroatypical girl with a tragic history and the chronically ill boy trying to break the vault encasing her heart.

Alvie Fitz doesn’t fit in, and she doesn’t care. She’s spent years swallowing meds and bad advice from doctors and social workers. Adjust, adapt. Pretend to be normal. It sounds so easy.

If she can make it to her eighteenth birthday without any major mishaps, she’ll be legally emancipated. Free. But if she fails, she’ll become a ward of the state and be sent back to the group home.

All she wants is to be left alone to spend time with her friend, Chance, the one-winged hawk at the zoo where she works. She can bide her time with him until her emancipation. Humans are overrated anyway.

Then she meets Stanley, a boy who might be even stranger than she is—a boy who walks with a cane, who turns up every day with a new injury, whose body seems as fragile as glass. Without even meaning to, she finds herself getting close to him. But Alvie remembers what happened to the last person she truly cared about.

Her past stalks her with every step, and it has sharp teeth. But if she can find the strength to face the enemy inside her, maybe she’ll have a chance at happiness after all.

She doesn’t know how to trust anyone, least of all herself. He’s the one person who isn’t afraid of her darkness.

• Autism Spectrum Representation: Alvie sees the world through a lens of logic and animal behavior, and her journey offers a raw, unfiltered look at life on the spectrum.
• Disability Representation: Stanley lives with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a brittle bone disease, and his story is a poignant exploration of strength in fragility.
• A Poignant First Love: An intensely emotional, slow-burn connection between two outsiders who find in each other the one person who truly understands.
• Mental Health Matters: A powerful story that confronts the reality of deep-seated trauma and the courage it takes to open the vault of a painful past.

About this title

About the Author

A . J . Steiger has lived her entire life in the Chicagoland area. Cathedral of Bones is her first book for middle grade readers, and she is also the author of the young adult book When My Heart Joins the Thousand.

Reviews

Gr 10 Up—Alvie is 17. She enjoys her routine of working at the zoo, coming home to her apartment, playing on her laptop, and going to the park near her home. After running away from foster care, she has been living on her own and is eager to be legally emancipated. Sitting in the park one day, she sees a boy (Stanley) throw his cell phone into the pond. She rescues the phone, emails him, and an online friendship quickly develops. When Stanley wants to meet in person, Alvie asks him if they can have sex. Although nothing is consummated, a romantic relationship starts to build between them. When Stanley tells Alvie he loves her, she panics and cuts off contact with him. This sends her into a spiral, which ultimately results in her losing her job and becoming homeless. It is only after she reconnects with Stanley and faces the truth about her past that she can find happiness. Flashbacks to Alvie's childhood, her difficulties at school, and her relationship with her mother add depth and understanding to her character. Her meltdowns and behavioral quirks (an interest in rabbits, a love of the book Watership Down) add dimension to what is a fully realized portrayal of a person living with Asperger's. As her romantic foil, Stanley's character is initially a little too perfect, but as the story progresses it is made clear that he struggles with his own issues. This is a love story that could also appeal to adult readers. Their love is hard-fought and deservedly earned. VERDICT Recommended for all YA collections.—Kefira Phillipe, Nichols Middle School, Evanston, IL

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062656473
• ISBN 13: 9780062656476
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352