Even though this book had similarities to others, it also felt very original to me. It was an honest and sometimes painful account of living with chronic disease and everything that goes along with it. The brutal impact on not just the patient, but also her parents and friendships is also explored through the words inside this book as we go along for the ride with Ellie.

Ellie has lived a lifetime in her young life - - a lifetime of surgeries and being poked, prodded and explored. A lifetime of having doctors "theorize" what may be wrong or "how to fix" Ellie's most recent issue. Ellie has lived a lifetime of trying to keep her two lives separate - - her life when everything is normal and her life when she's sick and away for surgeries. She tries so hard to not let the two cross. What she fails to realize is that she's missing out on extra support by keeping everyone separate. As the story progresses, Ellie will learn that there's so much more at play in her life that even she realizes. She will also learn more from her other friends who are suffering with their own illnesses and from the healthy friends that she's locked out of her life while she's been sick. She'll learn that balance is key.

Even though there were slow spots for me in the progression of this book, I really felt it had an important message that was worth sticking around for. It was a meaningful story and I did enjoy watching Ellie's character develop.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: The audiobook was really well done. I enjoyed the narration and felt that it was a good depiction of Ellie and the other characters in the book. It was very enjoyable. 4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for early copies of both the ebook and audiobook.

This book is so freaking powerful. i'm so glad that the main point of this book wasn't the romance, but coming to terms with ones own struggles. This will be recommended to all my friends. So good.

Ellie spends a good majority of her life in hospitals because of a disability caused by health issues. This story is full of teenage drama between family and friends as Ellie learns about friendship and love. At times it gets heavy with lots of things to process and ponder. Be aware that there is some swearing that might be uncomfortable for some readers. I enjoyed experiencing a different point of view on life. I also found it interesting that the story was based on the author’s own experience. I think this added authenticity to the characters and their feelings. I listened to the audiobook narrated by Natalie Naudus which was wonderful to listen to because of the different voices for each character. My favorite was Caitlin.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for the audiobook in exchange for my honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Let me start by saying that the premise of this book was good. The world needs more books, especially YA books, featuring characters with disabilities.

BUT that being said, the execution of the story and character development fell flat a bit for me. I found Ellie to be wildly unlikeable. I was mostly just annoyed and at some moments angry at her rather than being able to empathize with her or relate to her - and this is coming from someone with chronic health issues (albeit not nearly as severe as hers)! Even trying to imagine myself as a teenager again with a teenage brain, I still couldn't relate to her ways of approaching the world and relationships.

I will say that the saving grace was Ellie's feelings towards her mother's "mommy blog" about Ellie's life and struggles. I grew up well before the mommy blog trend, but I can imagine that growing up having all of your medical issues and personal life put on the internet without your consent and control would cause a lot of distress. I think that as the current generation grows up to realize that so-called influencers have been posting about them online since they were infants, I think this is an important and relevant topic to bring up and write about it.

A quick read, and overall I'd recommend for teens looking for a books about characters' experiences living with disabilities.

By the time she’s in high school, Ellie Haycock has already had forty surgeries. Born with VACTERLs, she’s accustomed to hospital visits and seeing specialists. She has her hospital life and her everyday life, and she prefers to keep them separate.

Now she finds herself back at the Family Care Home near the hospital. Ellie and her mom are staying there while the doctors try to determine what is causing the current issue with her lungs, and her mom is documenting every moment on a public blog about life with a disabled child.

Books like this are important, but that doesn’t mean they are emotionally easy to read. I appreciate that this one is written by an Own Voices author, who can relate to her main character’s experience, and that she doesn’t sugarcoat the experience of being a minor with a disability, surrounded by adults who make all the care decisions, or how medical professionals do not always have concrete answers or treatments for what’s going on.

This book dives into a high-stress situation with ambiguous outcomes where private moments are made public without consent. Understandably, Ellie struggles with how to respond and react in this situation, and that can be tough to read.

One of the highlights for me was seeing the close-knit group of friends form at the Family Care Home and seeing Ellie give a second chance to a couple of individuals that she had written off initially. I also enjoyed the romance subplot and liked that it was not the central focus of this story.

Natalie Naudus has a knack for narrating teenagers in angsty situations, and we see that exhibited in this audiobook. She captures the array of emotions that Ellie feels.

I received an advance copy of the audiobook from Macmillan Audio and NetGalley. All review opinions are my own.

A heartwarming young adult fiction!

Thanks NetGalley and Macmillan Audio, Macmillan Young Listeners for the ALC.

Kudos to the author on this well accomplished debut 👏.

Synopsis –

Ellie Haycock, 16, is very good at compartmentalizing her life – Hospital Ellie and Home/School Ellie. She is a skilled orator/debate aspirant at school, has a great set of friends and an understanding boyfriend, Jack. Her mom is a popular blogger and regularly posts about Ellie’s health and illnesses. With another looming hospital stay, can Ellie start trusting her team of doctors? How can Ryan, her eternal optimist hospital friend help?

Review –

The narrator Natalie Naudus excelled in portraying Ellie’s character. Through her narrative, we get to dive deep into the mindset of a teenage girl, understand her emotions, deepest desires and thoughts as she navigates her school, family, hospital lives and friendships. Her voice adaptation also worked greatly for other characters.

The author handles Ellie’s disability with the highest amount of care, delicacy and sensitivity it requires. She brings out all the nuances of a teenager battling health issues, the challenges it adds to her already tricky teenage life - while she craves to be ‘normal’, tries to fit in, aims to be successful for her debate team and strives to make her parents proud.

I was glad that Ellie had several hospital friends and committed parents as her support system. While the relationship she shares with her mother is complexly layered, with its share of ups and downs, it is also beautifully rendered and touched my heart.

The writing is richly emotive - for I could really feel and empathize with Ellie’s raw feelings, as she works through conflicting opinions, wants, needs and beliefs about the medical system that she must now rely on, to go back to normalcy. I cheered on for her and was happy with how everything turns out in the end.

The book instills hope, joy and draws attention to the silver lining in our lives. It also invokes awareness, empathy and understanding about what it is to live with chronic illnesses, endless surgeries and hospitalizations. Definitely worth a read!

I listened to the audiobook and Natalie Naudus does a great job, as always, giving voice to this story. Ellie's life is full of difficulties and my heart went out to her and her family. Disabilities, medical challenges, teen romance, and a mommy blogger are a few topics the author brings awareness to in this story.

Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal by Gretchen Schreiber

Thank you NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and Wednesday Books for the free audiobook.

Blurb:
The Breakfast Club meets Five Feet Apart in this big-hearted novel from debut author Gretchen Schreiber.

✨My thoughts:
I really really enjoyed this story. I have never read or listened to a story like this because I don’t like to be sad on purpose but here we are. Natalie Naudus (narrator) had me completely lost in this story and had me feeling all of the things. With the talent of both the author and the narrator, it really set this book up for success. I loathe any parents that uses their children for blogs, YouTube etc. however, I ended up feeling for Ellie’s mom too. As a mother, she was also trying to cope and deal with the health of her daughter. Truthfully, my heart aches for Ellie. she has two separate lives, just trying to feel and be as “normal” as she possibly could in her shoes. I have not experienced a life like this but it felt all too real and my heart goes out to those who do. I think the narrator did a remarkable job telling this story and I hope the author is proud. Ellie Haycock Is Totally Normal is out now!

Happy reading! 📖✨

Ellie likes to keep her hospital life and her "life" life separate. It's easier that way. Her friends at school won't understand what she goes through in the hospital and her friends at the hospital are just temporary. Who knows if she'll see them again. She's tired of the hospital ruining everything in her life and just wants doctors to know what's wrong with her and for her world to stay simple.
I loved the realness of Ellie. She lays it all out for the reader in a very teenager way. Is she a bit selfish when it comes to her mom? Maybe, but what teenager isn't? Add the fact that her mom blogs about every step of Ellie's medical journey and the lack of privacy that comes with that and ask what teen wouldn't get upset. Ellie's character is angsty and mad at the world but is lucky enough to have friends in both parts of her life who fight to be there for her and help her learn how to deal in her complicated world.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Set inside a children’s hospital, “Ellie Haycock” brings light to childhood illnesses and disabilities and their desire to be seen and accepted as normal. Told with humor and love, this is a great read.

Themes: 🏥🦽😷🦠

My thoughts: 😀🥹😂🥰🤩

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This book was so raw and inspiring! The description of The Breakfast Club mixed with Five Feet Apart was absolutely spot on! This story revolves around Ellie who is trying to live two lives, in the hospital and outside the hospital, and her struggles to let people in.

The character development for Ellie was so well done and really brought the audience along in this journey with her.

I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed the narrator's performance.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC. This was a cute coming of age story. Very YA but I loved it. Ellie has tried very hard to keep her "medical" life and her "normal" life separate. I loved the strong friendships in this novel. And I totally understood her wanting to keep her medical life secret and for her friends not to judge her.

This book is sad and cute and important. Very YA with some real angst, but a unique topic and perspective on childhood/chronic illness. I hated the mother and her blog- exploiting Ellie’s medical details- but this book does so much more that introduce irritation and really made me think about why a mother would do such a thing and what all parties in this book were going through. I’d definitely recommend this to YA audiences and anyone battling an illness.
The audio narration is done well, but the narrator sounded a little old for a teenaged girl. I’d recommend the physical more.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

I enjoyed this and it was interesting to read about someone coming into their own with a disability. I didn't always like the characters, and didn't quite fall for the romance but it was an enjoyable read. The narrator did a good job.

I got an ARC of this audiobook.

I first heard about this book while hanging out in the capital building. Schreiber’s dad is a representative and one of the most proud dads I have ever met. He was telling anyone who would listen that his daughter was an amazing author and her book was coming out soon. So I looked it up. Was her dad just being a proud dad or was he right about the book?

Well, he for sure was a proud dad, but this book was also worth the bragging. I am glad I found out about it. It is a great example of a contemporary YA romance/coming of age. It was not too far romance, but the romance there was made perfect sense. There was no forced relationships. There was natural growth and I wanted them together so badly. They worked so well.

The coming of age part really was the focus. Ellie had to learn to take charge of her life and how to stand on her own feet. Part of that was realizing that having these compartments for your life hindered you having a fully life instead of making it easier. The way that this ran really hard into the mom being a blogger was brilliant. It was clear that Ellie was so used to having her life on display that setting up the boundaries was a way for her to feel like she had any form of control in her life. The more that she was challenged on this, the more that everything crumbled.

I loved that there were not easy medical answers. Disabled people don’t always get easy answers and the distrust of doctors was just a total yes. There are so many doctors that will blame the patient or just not listen. Schreiber was able to show that without letting Ellie or any of the other teens lose total hope. It was a balancing act that was incredibly impressive.

Was this the best book in the world? No. It fit neatly into YA contemporary. That is part of why I love it so much. It was not trauma porn. It was not “look at the poor disabled kids getting perfect health at the end”. It was a YA contemporary that had disabled kids as the focus. Part of what makes this so spectacular to me is that it fits into the genre so nicely and doesn’t become only about disability. These kids are more than just a disability and they got more than just disability plots. They had love. They had heartache. They had fighting with their parents. They had being different from the kids at school. They had it all. They also had intense disability plots that drove the story without being the only plots. The fact that this book is not only one thing is what makes it so great. The way it melds into the genre makes it approachable for non-disabled teens. It is not sensationalized trauma. Instead it feels like a reality, with a touch of hope.

This was the first audiobook I've listened to where the narrator detracted from the experience. Natalie Naudus is a very talented voice actor, and this story was okay, but putting them together was a mistake. Naudus' mature voice reads more as romance or fantasy protagonist, not as a junior in high school. Even trying to move past that, this story felt lackluster. I know it was written based on the author's own experiences, but these characters talked, thought and acted much older than they were supposed to be, and the development and growth they went through didn't feel natural or gradual enough to be believable. The behind the scenes glimpses into hospital life was interesting though, and I would be first in line to read a memoir or nonfiction from this author, but this fiction story just wasn't for me.
(Thank you to Net Galley, Gretchen Schreiber and Macmillan Audio for sending me the audiobook to review. All thoughts are my own.)

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced copy of the audiobook. The narrator did a wonderful job. This is a story about a teen girl with a unique condition that makes being average teen hard. Ellie's mom is always posting updates on social media about Ellie's condition, hospital visits, etc. Ellie is adamant that her hospital life and friends there stay completely separate from her school friends and life outside of the hospital. It makes some of her friends feel unimportant and ultimately Ellie will learn that both of her worlds can be part of her life both in and outside of the hospital. Ellie struggles with her Mom constantly posting about her. She feels like she has no privacy at all and asks her Mom to stop. Ellie has a great group of friends to rally around her and when she lets the two sides of her life merge she realizes that everything is much better that way.

Reviewing this one is hard. It was written well, but I feel like it wasn't completely original. There was a whole lot of similarities between this and Five Feet Apart. I've never really been a fan of books with children who have illnesses, so I tried to keep that in mind while going through this so I wouldn't let my personal biases get in the way of an accurate review. I loved the characters. I loved the emphasis of the two different lives. I just didn't really like listening this feeling like I've already heard this story before. The narrator did a fantastic job, though.

“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. I both listened and read this one and I was sucked into their world via the narration. It was so spot on in grasping the angst that are the teenaged years, even without the added component of a chronic illness. Overall an emotional, heartfelt, and sweet read full of hurt, longing, anger, but, ultimately, forgiveness and love.

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, 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.

I listened to the audiobook narrated by Natalie Naudus. She did a great job bringing the story to life. When I had trouble getting into the digital ARC, Naudus’s narration pulled me back in to the story and kept me engaged.

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