Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal was marketed quite well and read quickly. The story is told in the present timeline, main in a hospital setting, and through past and present blog posts [ mainly the former ]. I would recommend it to other YA readers who enjoy contemporary.

There is a very thoughtful author's note regarding the content of the story.

I was given an Advanced Reader's Copy through Wednesday Books Publishing and Netgalley. I give my honest review voluntarily. My review is my own thoughts and opinion; my experience in reading this story.

Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber is a remarkable novel. I sincerely love the author’s characters. There is such quirkiness and vivacity and truth to these characters that you feel like you know them. This is such an important book and I cannot wait to see more books by this author. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

This was a sweet and sometimes moving story. I felt for Ellie and her desire to be allowed to grow and her struggle to find her place and her people. I also was frustrated with her inability at times to see and appreciate what was right in front of her. But, don’t we all do that at one time or another?

Overall, an enjoyable YA read that gave me a window into living with a chronic illness.


Thank you Gretchen Schreiber, NetGalley, and St. Martin’s Press, for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal gave me Wonder vibes but for a YA audience. Where Wonder gave readers an insight into bullying, Ellie gives us a glimpse into what it's like trying to navigate high school while also living part-time at the hospital.

I found Ellie to have this perfect blend of tension between wanting a normal high school life with the reality of battling a rare genetic condition which caused her to spend large amounts of time at the hospital and also influenced her relationship with her blogger-mom. Ellie aims to keep her hospital life separate from her school life, thinking that is the best way to keep friendships, but realizes that maybe it prevents her friends from really knowing the real her. And genetic condition or not, Ellie deals with boyfriend drama, friend drama, and momma drama just like any teen, she just gets the added layer of doctors and learning to speak up for herself despite feeling powerless within the medical community.

The found family cast are great and the banter and quirks about them are endearing. I wasn't only rooting for Ellie, but for Luis, Caitlin, Ryan, and Veronica.

Solid 4.5 stars! Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

as someone who grew up in and out of the hospital i didn’t like the friendship setting. you can find people outside of the hospital who understand, it’s not the same but it isn’t whilst in the hospital anyway, everyone is different

Having lived with serious, chronic medical issues since childhood, I was hoping to find this book a little more relatable. Yes, there are some very condescending physicians and yes, medical gas lighting occurs. Yes, relationships are often difficult to maintain. However, I found the level of chronic anger to be over the top and Ellie's mom to be quite annoying. I'm glad I read it and I think it is somewhat useful in showing what life with a disability can be like. Thanks #NetGalley

Ellie Haycock has her “sick” friends and her “normal” friends and she is unwilling to let her two worlds collide. As someone who is medically fragile, she doesn’t want her friends from home to treat her differently if they knew about her life in and out of hospitals and the Home (read Ronald McDonald house). Her mother has already almost ruined it for her before with her online blog detailing her medical history. That oversharing is a whole other world annoyance in her life.

When a new cough racks her already weak lungs, she is forced to see the doctors again to figure out what is wrong. This stay is different. Besides her hospital bestie Caitlin (who also has VATER Syndrome), she meets two other patients with life threatening illnesses and a volunteer, and Team Tumor begins to make Ellie question everything she thought she understood. They work to convince her that her friends from her high school will still like her if she gives them more details about her diagnoses and surgical procedures, and that compartmentalizing isn’t helping her cope. More importantly, they help her to feel brave enough to confront her mom about her blog. As she has gotten older it is has become more invasive than her surgeries. All Ellie wants is a little autonomy over her own body when it comes to her parents and her doctor’s medical plan.

Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal is definitely geared toward a teen audience. As an adult, I found her whiny at times and ungrateful towards her friends and family, but she is a teen and she is learning to navigate the world with tougher circumstances than the average kiddo. I am sure there isn’t enough medical focused stories in the YA genre, so I applaud the author for contributing and giving us a character who is perhaps fragile in body, but certainly strong in mind.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and of course the author Gretchen Schreiber for the advanced copy of the book. Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal is out on March 5th. All opinions are my own.

Thank you for the review copy on NetGalley and the physical review copy (can I say i love the cover art)

This is a wonderfully welcome examination of adolescent development and disability rep. Schreiber writes a story the unites the complexities of adolescence and high school, of crushes and social lives, of academics and stress and pressure, with the nuances of disability, of being in a hospital, of being held up as a token symbol, of at times being seen as less than or weaker because of disability. The author understands, as you can tell from her note, that just because you are disabled, or in a hospital, doesn't mean that all the other things about being an adolescent go away or stop being important.... instead the desire to fit in, to be connected, to have friends might actually be amplified. I love the inclusion of how Ellie feels about how she is treated/seen by nurses, by doctors, by friends, and by her mom and her mom's blog. This book will have you rethinking how you view representation of youth with disability.

Ellie Haycock is gloriously insightful and a great read for young adults. As a health psych teacher I also think this is a great read for classes examining health and development.

Im upset I couldn’t fully get into this. It felt so slow and forced and half the time I had to go back and reread because the book was just too flat for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This is a beautifully written story about a teenager with chronic illness who tries to separate herself and the people around her from the “hospital” her and the “home” her. I’m so glad that books about chronic illness and kids who are sick are getting more attention. It’s good for people with these conditions to know they aren’t alone and they have people who are thing to understand them. It’s normal for people with disabilities to love and live a happy and normal life, and books like this help shape the way.

This was a wonderfully written book about self discovery. I flew through this book so quickly I hardly put it down. This is such a fun read I would definitely recommend.

A full review will come as soon as the publishers/imprints under St. Martin Press (i.e. Wednesday Books), address the racism, Islamophobia, pinkwashing, and Zionist rhetoric they have enabled and perpetruated. For more information and ways to raise awareness and support, please check out the website --> r4a.caard.co

This book will make you laugh and cry. This is just an overall wonderful story. Everyone can relate to Ellie, which really draws you into the story even more.

Overall really enjoyed this. Had actually struggled with the ebook and tried the audiobook and enjoyed it much more! There was a lot of angst at times, but Ellie is a character with a lot of fire and anger about her situation, as she had a right to. Overall a really solid and important YA

Ellie’s life hasn’t been easy or “normal” – she spends almost as much time in hospitals as she does at home. She’s done a good job at keeping these two parts of her life separate, despite her mother’s blog documenting every step of their journey. But this time, Ellie makes friends during her hospital stay, one of whom she realizes she might have growing feelings for. But Ellie doesn’t know how to have faith in her doctors or her friends, and it might just cause more problems than she realizes.

Let me start by saying that I really liked the premise of this work and what the author wanted to do with it. The representation was solid, and I liked seeing a YA book that emphasized what it’s like for teens who are in the hospital so often. There were many details included that are going to be beneficial for folks who haven’t really considered what this scenario would be like. This should have made for a compelling read, but the work ended up falling short for me.

Some of my main issues came from the characters. Ellie was not a compelling protagonist. She was excessively jaded. I get how that’s perfectly reasonable given the situation and the things she had to deal with, but there were no positive or compelling aspects of her character to balance the anger and hate out, so she ended up being quite repetitive/annoying as the whole book is told from her POV. She also firmly believed until the very end of the book that no one in her life would understand what she was going through unless they also happened to be in a hospital long term. This ended up being true in her case because she tried zero times to explain anything to anyone. This was part of the point of the story, but it wasn’t incorporated in a way that was meaningful – we weren’t given a compelling reason for Ellie to feel this way, so again, her stubbornness just became frustrating.

Unfortunately, I also felt no chemistry was present in the romance. This book would have been much stronger if the author had focused on creating a strong friendship rather than forcing romance on the characters. There was also a major subplot relating to Ellie’s mom and her blog detailing Ellie’s life. I had a couple issues with this. Blog posts were included between the chapters, starting from when Ellie was a baby in order to provide some background on her and her family’s situation. However, the posts were often quite long, and it just didn’t mesh well with the primary plot. Shorter and fewer posts would have strengthened the story. There was conflict between Ellie and her mom surrounding the blog, and they both came off as selfish and unreasonable, which didn’t make for a compelling subplot.

This book has a good message and representation, but it wasn’t executed in a way that made reading this enjoyable. I’m sure some folks will really love this one, but it didn’t work for me. My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for allowing me to read this work, which will be published March 5, 2024. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Thanks to Netgalley and Wednesday Books for the eARC.

This book is so funny and heart_breaking. I laughed and I cried. Ellie is such a a wonderful character and I think relatable even to people without a rare illness. I thought this book was brilliant and I loved every page.

I was really hoping to love this book, but I struggled to get into it. I liked Ellie, and the premise of the story was good but I had a hard time with the fact that her friends outside of the hospital setting knew nothing of her illness, like, nothing, especially since her mom had a popular blog. But, that being said, I still liked it. Having 5 teenagers myself, her character felt very realistic. I would still recommend this book especially to teens.

I have VACTERL, which the main character in this book has, and I I have never seen a VACTERL character in a novel and in this book there are TWO. There’s also romance, turbulent and brand new friendships, and Battlestar Galactica. The battle between keeping two separate identities - the disabled one and the “normal” one.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I can’t review this book. It’s too personal to me. But what I can do is tell you what it means to me to see someone with my condition being on bookshelves… It’s freeing. It’s heartwarming. It would make me cry happy tears, if my tear ducts worked properly, because I grew up reading books with normative and able bodied characters. Characters I read about didn’t have missing limbs and organs and surgical scars. They have bleached white teeth and were normal.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
If you are a VACTERL adult, buy this book. If you are a mom of a VACTERL kid, especially a teen girl, buy this book. It doesn’t come out until March 5, but pre-order it now.

I enjoyed this different YA story. We don’t often get characters dealing with an illness like this and it was good to see this represented. A cute story.

This book follows Ellie Haycock, a teen girl with VATERs, who tries to keep her “normal” like and hospital life separate. As much as she wants to, she is finding it harder to do that with her latestu trip to the hospital.

As much as I wanted to love this book, I just had the hardest time trying to get into it and finishing. It took pure determination to not DNF. I found myself not even wanting to pick it up. The main character was pretty annoying and seemed to just walk around with a negative attitude no matter what. Nobody likes a pessimistic person.

Thank you NetGalley and Wednesday Books for an advanced copy of this is exchange for an honest review!