Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jul 2017
304 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Fans of More Happy Than Not, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and It's Kind of a Funny Story will cheer for Adam as he struggles with schizophrenia in this brilliantly honest and unexpectedly funny debut.
Adam has just been diagnosed with schizophrenia. He sees and hears people who aren't there: Rebecca, a beautiful girl who understands him; the Mob Boss, who harasses him; and Jason, the naked guy who's unfailingly polite. It should be easy to separate the real from the not real, but Adam can't.
Still, there's hope. As Adam starts fresh at a new school, he begins a drug trial that helps him ignore his visions. Suddenly everything seems possible, even love. When he meets Maya, a fiercely intelligent girl, he desperately wants to be the great guy that she thinks he is. But then the miracle drug begins to fail, and Adam will do anything to keep Maya from discovering his secret.
"Starred Review. First-time author Walton creates a psychologically tense story with sympathetic characters while dispelling myths about a much-feared condition." - Publishers Weekly
"A heartfelt, gripping story that demystifies an illness too often ignored. Highly recommended for older teens and adults." - School Library Journal
"... a welcome novel that doesn't treat schizophrenia as an unavoidable sentence of doom and that allots friendship and romance equal weight with mental illness." - Kirkus
"A brutal, beautiful book that sits right beside The Perks of Being a Wallflower and I'll Give You the Sun." - Jennifer Longo, author of Up to This Pointe
"This book reminds me of A Monster Calls. I saved the final twenty pages for the next day because I didn't want Adam's story to end." - Peter Brown Hoffmeister, author of This Is the Part Where You Laugh
This information about Words on Bathroom Walls 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.
Julia Walton received her MFA in creative writing from Chapman University. When she's not reading or baking cookies, she's indulging in her profound love of Swedish Fish, mechanical pencils, and hobbit-sized breakfasts. Julia lives in Huntington Beach, California, with her husband and daughter.
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