-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
THE LAW OF LOVING OTHERS . . .
Hours after Emma returns home from boarding school, she realizes that her mom is suffering from a schizophrenic break. Suddenly, Emma's entire childhood and identity is called into question.
COULD NOT BE DISCOVERED BY REASON,
Desperate for answers, Emma turns to her boyfriend, Daniel. Will he love her even if she goes crazy too? But it's the lonely, brooding boy Emma meets while visiting her mother at the hospital who really understands Emma. Phil encourages Emma's reckless need for hurt and pain in the face of all this change and she is soon caught in a complicated spiral of loss and mistrust.
BECAUSE IT IS UNREASONABLE.
In the span of just one winter break, Emma's relationships alter forever and she is forced to see the wisdom in a line from Anna Karenina: ?The law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable."
A beautifully grounded coming-of-age novel, The Law of Loving Others demands that the reader accept the main character, Emma, for who she is, while also creating deep sympathy for all that she is going through.
"Heavy on Emma's internal monologue, debut novelist Axelrod's prose is careful, intelligent, and contemplative. Ages 14 and up." - Publishers Weekly
"Axelrod has created a convincing portrait of a teen newly experiencing the step-by-step process of learning how to cope with a family member's mental illness." - School Library Journal
"Family mental illness is rarely explored in novels for teens, but this one, trudging a well-worn path across too-familiar terrain, fails to fill the void." - Kirkus
?Kate Axelrod's atmospheric, intense book captures perfectly the heady feeling of being on the edge of adulthood, when the abstract concept of 'love' starts to have real and sometimes terrifying meaning and consequences." - Emily Gould, author of Friendship
This information about The Law of Loving Others was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kate Axelrod was born and raised in New York City. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College and a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She has written for Nerve.com, Salon and various other publications. She lives in Brooklyn and works as an advocate in the criminal justice system. This is her first novel.
If you liked The Law of Loving Others, try these:
by Ann Napolitano
Published 2024
From the New York Times bestselling author of Dear Edward comes a poignant and engrossing family story that asks: Can love make a broken person whole?
by Maureen Sun
Published 2024
"You're my sister, but I'm not sure I love you. I'm not sure I love anyone. But if someone hurt you I'd want to kill him. I'd want him to die in pain. And he has hurt you…"
by Meredith Russo
Published 2017
A new kind of big-hearted novel about being seen for who you really are.
The only completely consistent people are the dead
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
