This was a good YA book that really dealt with a lot of adult things in a YA way. I really liked Ellie and learning more about her, but this book did drag a bit without a lot of variation in what was happening. I almost DNFd, but I think I'm glad I pushed through.

A very real look inside what’s it’s like to be a chronically ill kid, especially when your disability is visible and impossible to hide. You could tell that the author is telling this story from a vulnerable place, revealing things she’d actually felt: that not only had her disability and all the hospitalizations and surgeries ruined her life, it’s ruined the lives of her family and all the relationships around her as well. There’s a lot of fear and anger and hurt, pushing people away before they can reject you, letting your true feelings build up until you explode. In the end, though, what Ellie learns is what we all need to learn: we can’t control the terrible things life throws our way, and not every day is going to be good, but we can control how we react to those things and how we relate to those around us. We can choose to share what’s going on with those who love us, and allow them to help us through those hard times, just as they celebrate the good times. We can be honest and tell people when we’re upset with them, and then work to repair that relationship or choose to let it go.

Ellie just wanted to be normal, and have a normal life, but she thought she had to hide the “ugly” parts of herself to be normal. Turns out, she just needed to have some control over her own life and who knows what about her. I’m pretty sure I was mad at every character at some point while reading, including Ellie, but I’m glad that in the end, she was able to work things out with everyone that matters to her, and most of all, that her mom understood why she felt like she did about the blog and was willing to shut it down.

There were times when the writing was a little inconsistent, and it felt like Ellie’s thoughts and emotions were whipping back and forth like a ride she wouldn’t be allowed on. While it was disconcerting at first, it’s probably pretty accurate to how the author truly felt at that time, and her perspective is one that is sorely missing in YA fiction. I would definitely recommend this one.

Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber is an emotional read. You can feel Ellie’s emotions almost as if they are your own. I was rooting for her to get her extraordinary experiences. There is also a lot of great wit. This is a YA read that brims with meaning.

Young adult novels are hit-or-miss with me, and while I thought the premise of Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal was interesting, I started reading with a bit of trepidation. I need not have worried, as Gretchen Schreiber has written a beautiful story of friendship, parenting, and young love set in a family residence near a children's hospital that centers around a teenage girl with a chronic genetic illness.

The book delves into the reality of dealing with serious illness, especially when the outcome of treatment or lack of diagnosis is frustrating, and the author does so without sentimentality. The effect of Ellie's disability on those around her, as well as her own interactions and relationships, provides the reader with thought-provoking situations and insight into the impact of medical interventions on families and friendships.

I thought each of the characters was well-developed and interesting, and I was hoping for positive outcomes for all. As a fan of The Fault in Our Stars and the Breakfast Club, I found the comparisons appropriate, and would recommend this book for teens and adults alike.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press-Wednesday Books for the digital ARC of Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber. The opinions in this review are my own.

As someone who spent their high school and adult years in and out of hospitals, plus being the mom of a son with special needs who also is in and out of hospitals quite frequently, I honestly thought this book would be a shoe-in for me. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

A few of the issues that I personally had was that the situation with Ellie was not believable. Someone her age who has had over 40 surgeries, which would average over 3 a year since birth, would simply not be able to attend public school and be able to keep an illness such as hers a secret from anyone. Her attitude towards anyone who wasn't her was callous and she always assumed the worst in people without even giving them a chance to understand or support her. This in combination with her self-centered attitudes towards her mom and her hospital friends made her a not very likeable person.

Even though this novel was not for me, I do greatly appreciate more novels for young adults with disability visibility for others to learn and understand what life can be like for those of us who have to split our time between hospital life and not-hospital life. I actually identified the most with Ellie's mom, not because I blog about mine or my son's medical conditions, but because I understood her lonliness and the need for a support system. I have had friends who have decided my medical issues are too much for them and I have had friends who have stood by me every step of the way, but the only people who truly truly understand what you are going through are those who are going through it themselves and medical communities and support groups are essential for moms with kids with special needs.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advanced reader's copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars

I love the fact that we're starting to see more books on the market that contain main characters with a disability. Ellie is one such character. She's honest, perhaps too much so at times, and totally relatable and realistic! Her struggles with her chronic condition and educational and inspirational. Then when you throw in the usual teen dramas with friends, school, and parents, you have a must-read book! I love how Ellie doesn't sugarcoat anything. She doesn't try to convince everyone that everything is sunshine and roses ... and that's totally spot-on, especially when you live with a chronic illness. The supporting characters are also well crafted and, along with Ellie, have great development. Ellie has a great group of friends that help her, and each other, navigate the challenges of life, particularly when they involve hospital stays. I wasn't familiar with VATERs syndrome prior to this book, so I appreciated learning more about this rare disability, and the author's personal experience adds another layer of credibility to the story. This book will stick with me, and I look forward to reading more from Schreiber!

This was an average read for me. I liked the general message of this book. I did think it lacked a little depth. But overall it was good.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the E-ARC.

All thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, Wednesday Books, and the author Gretchen Schreiber for the opportunity to read this wonderful book.

It was a fantastic young adult book about a teenage girl named Ellie who was born with a chronic disease. She had tried her entire life to keep her friends at school separate from her friends at the hospital where she visited frequently for treatment for her disease. She tried extremely hard to not allow her school friends to see how sick she actually was. She desperately wanted to live a "normal" life. Unfortunately, Ellie's mom wrote a blog about her illness, because she wanted to help other families who were dealing with the same sort of situation. She knew her mom meant well, but it angered her and she believed it was not a helpful blog. Eventually, her two worlds collided and everything Ellie thought she wanted started to fall apart.

I absolutely loved how the author, Schreiber, showed the difficulties children and their families have when their child struggles with a chronic illness. It was also interesting to view it from Ellie's point of view. I think this would be a great book for teenagers to read and discuss with their peers, parents, and teachers. It was written wonderfully and it definitely helped me to think about how it must feel to live your entire life with a chronic disease.

“Physical pain I can deal—I do deal—with, but no hospital pain scale can measure being left behind.”

4.5 stars for this young adult romance! Hurt people hurt people. Oh Ellie. I am not sure that I have ever wanted to jump inside the pages of a book and hug a fictional character the way I want to hug her. Boy was this book emotional.

“You’re not your medical file, you know that, right?”

And I want so bad to judge Ellie‘s mother for blasting her medical information all over social media in the form of a blog. But also, who am I to judge what any parent has to do to get through life with a chronically ill child? I wouldn’t dare to do so.

“The hospital cannot break or fix everything—that is entirely up to you.”

The character arcs in this story are everything I want to read. I WANT to see you win. I WANT to root for you. I WANT you to be happy. I finished this book feeling so satisfied and happy. Overall an emotional, heartfelt, and sweet read full of hurt, longing, anger, but, ultimately, forgiveness and love.

Thank you to Netgalley, St. Martin’s Press, Wednesday Books, and the author for the ARC and ALC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a cute YA novel that tackles a very difficult and serious subject. I enjoyed reading about Ellie and her friends, and I learned a lot about chronic illnesses and the challenges that come with them. I appreciated that the author was able to provide disability representation in a unique and positive way. The characters felt like real teenagers who you just can’t help but root for. Definitely a book I would recommend to a YA audience.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love when an author tells you this is some of her experience and it's okay not to read it. If you don't like sick children or hospitals.
Like the whole story takes place in and out of hospitals

I continued even though I cant relate I found this to be interesting and a bit boring I didn't not like Ellie! She seems to hate everyone but the mother having a mom blog writing about her daughter and her time in the hospital was just okay.


My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

This book is so important!! We need more books that have main characters with disabilities to be able to help inform the world about them! It was really nice yo be able to see Ellie accept herself more and more as the story progressed and to be able to mix her worlds! I was able to relate to Ellie not really trusting doctors to be able to diagnose or “fix” her because so many of the illnesses I’ve dealt with my entire life were things that the doctors couldn’t figure out what was really going on and it’s so frustrating! It’s frustrating to be in pain and doctors telling you that there’s nothing that indicates anything should be wrong, it’s frustrating to have medical professionals making you feel like you’re crazy because they can’t understand the pain you’re in, and it’s frustrating to start to question yourself and whether or not you might actually be Imaging all of these things. And people that don’t go through things like that will never truly be able to understand but it would be nice to be acknowledged and listened to and I think books like this will help people to understand better!

I really enjoyed this debut YA contemporary by Gretchen Schreiber. It read almost like a coming age story even though Ellie, the protagonist, feels very grown up from her circumstances, having been in and out of surgeries and hospitals since she was born. Ellie has always kept her hospital and school life separate which means keeping her boyfriend and best friend at arm's length. This is complicated when she's admitted to the hospital with no end in sight. This was such an interesting and thoughtful portrayal of disability. You are in Ellie's head throughout the book and Ellie is thoughtful, stubborn, scared and struggling and watching her come to terms with her new friends ("the tumor squad") and how she wants to move forward in the world was very moving.

Ellie's story is complicated by her mother who has been blogging about her and her various medical issues since she was born. Ellie has gotten increasingly fed up with the way her mother has coopted a lot of her experiences and the way she and the doctors never seem to listen to what she wants. Mommy bloggers and the like are very prevalent on social media and I thought the way the book handled this was very well done.

Ellie is frustrating at times but she has great friends that help her along the way.

Thank you so much to Wednesday Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ellie Haycock is navigating two lives, and she prefers to keep them separate, or least as separate as her body allows. There's Ellie at school, an active member of her school's speech and debate team, involved with her friends, and not needing any help and certainly not any saccharine sympathy, thank you. And there's Ellie in the hospital, again, with a totally different group of friends, facing a forty-somethingth surgery she doesn't want but can't refuse because she's still a minor, dealing with breathing issues that will not go away. Ellie doesn't think her school friends can deal with the reality of her physical challenges due to VACTERL (her past experiences have shown that), and she's incredibly weary of her mom's medical blog that has been posting all the details of Ellie's medical life since she was a baby (with pictures). She doesn't trust her doctors (they certainly aren't finding a solution to her current medical crisis). And in the middle is Ellie herself, spiky and frozen, amazing on a stage but unable to talk about the small details of her life. This is an interesting YA novel about a teenager navigating life, health, autonomy, and romance in her complicated body.

Thanks to the publisher, the author, and Netgalley for my free earc. My opinions are all my own.

This was a cute read! I really appreciated the insight into how kids with chronic illnesses handle the constant hospitalization. This book was a good mix of informing the reader & escapism into a YA romance, which I feel like would be hard to balance. The author also did a great job showing what it’s like to have separate friend groups growing up and balancing those different sides of your life. Overall, I really enjoyed this book!

Posted on Instagram, Goodreads & StoryGraph 3/4,

If you want a YA romance / coming of age story that hits a little different, this one could be for you. It has great disability rep and portrays what it is like to be a chronically ill, disabled teen who spends half their life in the hospital but desperately wants to be a “normal” teen.

Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber an excellent YA coming of age debut!
I couldn’t get enough of this heartfelt and totally unputdownable story.
The characters were all really well written, and I appreciated the relationships they had with each other as well as with other side characters.
I thought this was such a relatable and beautifully written novel.
With just the right amount of emotion to keep me so engaged and focused.
I adored this book and I’m looking forward to seeing what Gretchen Schreiber creates next!

All in all, this book was a fantastic read. I enjoyed the journey and everything in it.

Thank You NetGalley and Wednesday Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

I read somewhere that "Ellie Haycock is Totally Normal" is "Six Feet Apart" meets "The Breakfast Club" and I feel like this is an absolutely accurate assessment of this story. It's YA, but not the cheesy type of YA that adults are embarrassed to read. Ellie Haycock is a 16 year old girl who, due to a mystery illness, continually ends up in the hospital. She likes to try to keep her hospital life separate from her outside life as much as possible. That's near impossible though when her mom is a high profile blogger who puts every part of Ellie's hospital stays and many surgeries online for others to read and relate to. Ellie struggles a bit this time around with trusting the doctors to do the right thing, becoming closer with some of her hospital friends (and maybe even some new ones) and wondering if she will be better in time to go to the dance with her boyfriend back home. It was a good mix of emotions going on. I liked reading about Ellie and she seemed like a real 16 year old girl. For those who liked "Six Feet Apart" and possibly the TV show "Red Band Society", I would recommend this book.

I enjoyed reading this book about Ellie and her hospital friends and all that they were going through. I really liked the friendship betwen Ellie and Caitlin and I loved Ryan as well. Brooke seemed like a good friend but Jack - not so much. It was interesting learning about VACTERLs as it wasn't something I had ever heard of. I could relate to Ryan somewhat as I have an autoimmune disorder and getting diagnosed can take a long time. I understand that this novel is connected to the writer's real life, and was probably therapeutic in writing. However, I didn't like how angry Ellie was all of the time. It seems that in reality there would be some more in-between emotions. I also feel that there are more people in the world who would actually be good friends and be understanding that what was portrayed in the book. I'm sure it doesn't always seem that way though. The writing was a little disjointed in places which made it difficult to know exactly what the author was trying to say in some scenes. I received an advanced reader e-book copy, so I'm sure some of those areas have been fixed.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. Thank you to #NetGalley and #Wednesdaybooks for an eARC of #EllieHaycockIsTotallyNormal by #GretchenSchreiber in exchange for honest feedback. 3 stars

Ellie has spent her whole life dealing with health conditions which has required a lot of time in hospitals. Her mom has blogged about it since she was born. Now in high school, she is facing another unexplained illness that has disrupted a fairly normal school year and a budding romance. Although the premise of the book was good, I never fully embraced the storyline or Ellie as a character.