DNF after one chapter, thirty pages or so.

It's impossible to beat my personal records for "quickest I've abandoned a book" because I no longer remember what the record-holder or number of pages is. My gut tells me it took 4-8 pages.

10 Things I Can See from Here made a valiant effort to re-set the record, though.

Upon her arrival in Vancouver, Maeve notes fourteen pink granite benches, which memorialize fourteen women murdered by who she refers to as "a wacko with a gun and a manifesto."

BITCH, THAT'S THE ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE MASSACRE.

The first thing you learn about the Ecole Polytechnique massacre is that it happened; the second thing you learn is that it was an act of male supremacist terrorism. Seeing that horrific act reduced to "a wacko with a gun and a manifesto" is just incandescently infuriating. It's also startlingly ableist coming from a character who is mentally ill herself.

"Wacko" people, aka the mentally ill, are more likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. Politicians and media figures regularly use mental illness as a scapegoat so they can avoid talking about the real problems: gun violence as a whole and the extremely high percentage of mass shooters who are white men with misogynistic tendencies.

I get it, this book came out in February 2017, before Parkland and before every mass shooting since. But even in 2017, reducing a mass murderer to "a wacko" was already ableist. People had been saying for year by thens to stop doing that because all it did was put mentally ill people in danger and scapegoat them. But here we are.

Go read Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates, please.

In 10 Things I Can See From Here, the main character, Maeve, suffers from horrible anxiety. In fact some of her anxiousness and quoting of death statistics made me pretty anxious. Her life is upturned when her mom decides to go out of the country with her new boyfriend to help in one of his charitable organizations. Maeve is sent to live with her father, his new wife and two younger brothers in Vancouver. Maeve has to learn to deal with her anxiety in a new place, when all she really wants to do is go home. Then she meets Salix, a beautiful, talented and seemingly fearless girl and falls in love.

Maeve struggles a lot with her anxiety and with her father. I like that she's really caring about her half brothers, despite the huge age difference. I also like that the author didn't follow the "wicked stepmother" trope. Maeve and Claire get along and you can tell Maeve really cares about her. Claire also does what she can to help Maeve with her issues and to try to push her in small ways to conquer her fears.

I liked Salix as a character as well. We learn a lot about Salix too, and who she is as a person - her hopes and dreams and fears. I think she is perfect for Maeve. She's funny too. I love how much both girls grow by the end of the story.

I like Maeve, the Vancouver setting, the writing style, and the relationships that drive the novel. But the strongest thing about this novel is its depiction of Maeve's anxiety as well as how she and those in her life learn to manage it.

verall: Contemporary YA can provide a mixed bag for me, but this book was a quick and enjoyable read that left me curious about Carrie Mac’s other works.

This is a very realistic portrayal of Maeve, a girl who clearly has an anxiety disorder. Told from her point-of-view, you could see how the most insignificant thing could spin her thinking out of control. She is definitely a “worst case scenario” thinker, but also an extremely creative and sensitive soul. She is very much a sympathetic character. It can be very painful to be inside her head and I would warn anyone that may be triggered by extremely anxious thinking to be aware before picking up this book.

Maeve must move to Vancouver to live with her father, stepmother and step brothers (Corbin & Ownen, oh my!!). Again, Carrie provides a very realistic portrayal of a mixed family. Mac uses a delicate hand and avoids the trope of evil stepmother by making Claire extremely sympathetic and kind. Maeve’s mother the distant mother who runs off to Haiti with a man she hasn’t known very long. Maeve’s father’s drug and alcohol abuse, current and past, is the cloud that looms.

From Maeve’s first encounter with Salix, to their meet/cute, to their eventual relationship, I can not say enough positive things about the portrayal of this F/F love story. Filled with music, whimsy and just adorable and awkward banter, I do ship these two so very much. Kudos to Mac for providing a realistic portrayal of a GLBT love story that many can identify with.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: I personally deal with anxiety, so I was interested to see how they would approach that aspect of the book. The book itself is pretty morbid. My anxiety is different than Maeve's so it wasn't too difficult for me to read this book. But I feel like someone with severe anxiety would be triggered into a panic attack by reading this with as many terrible facts and situations that Maeve is constantly listing. It was really exhausting for me trying to keep up with everything that went through her head. But after all of that, I really enjoyed the ending and especially the last scene.

COVER: I love simple covers with pretty typography, so I love this cover.

I suffer from mild anxiety and could relate to parts of this book which defiantly helped. When the protagonist Maeve's mother travels and has to leave Maeve with her father and new wife, you can already feel the anxiety building.

I did however get a little bored and found some parts really predictable.

I couldn't finish this one, unfortunately. It didn't hold my attention even though I believe the cover is amazing!

I loved this coming of age love story, that managed to be truthful and honest and sweet while explaining a disorder that many teens are afflicted with. All that along with many other problems that may or may not face teens.

10 Things I Can See From Here
What worked: This is an authentic portrayal of a teen who deals with severe anxiety. I know, as I deal with anxiety too. The author nails the feelings, struggles, fears, and yes, worries that go through someone's mind while dealing with anxiety attacks. I had to put the story down a few times, as the emotions Maeve went through, rang very true.

Maeve worries all the time to the point that she thinks of the worse scenario for everything. Very authentic! Maeve's mother goes off with her boyfriend Raymond to help for six months in Haiti. Due to Maeve's anxiety, she is sent to live with her father and his new family in Vancouver. Her father is a recovering addict and her stepmother is pregnant. A big plus for not having the stereotypical terrible stepmother. Maeve tries to hate her, but can't.

Though I loved the portrayal of a teen struggling with severe anxiety, I did feel that some of the issues in the novel were almost handled too perfectly. I did like that neither of her families are judgmental about her coming out and do feel that sends a positive message out there. But it felt almost as if they were too accepting of her addict father after he starts using again. Though the father is pretty honest to Maeve on what to expect.

Salix balances out Maeve and tries to help her to take chances and not let fear rule her life. Readers also learn more about Maeve's first girlfriend and an experience that goes terribly wrong with another friend.

This is also a coming of age story with a sweet same sex relationship. When she meets Salix, she feels something more than worry. Their relationship is filled with firsts.

Powerful insight into the life of a teen suffering from severe anxiety but also one that shows the power of friendship and love. Maeve's journey is sure to resonate with teens.

Really easy to read and I sped through it. I have already recommended this book to many friends, and I will continue to do so.

I really enjoyed this story. The character of Maeve was very well drawn, you felt her anxiety as keenly as she did. At the beginning it felt as though life was happening TO her and as you move through the story and she gains more angency you can sense that shift in control. The romance was adorable. Even when it got dark the family stuff wasn't too heavy handed. A great summer read with some depth.

When I saw that there was a book in Alred A Knopf Books for Young Reader's Winter line up that dealt with anxiety, I was pumped. Which is weird, because mental illness isn't something that should make you excited. However, due to the drastic under representation of people with mental illness in literature, specifically young adult novels, I was excited to see what 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac would do to illuminate the subject of mental illness. And overall, I was very impressed. I don't think I was the only one either. I have seen so many other people also say that they feel like this book did such a great job representing how it feels to have anxiety. Even though anxious thoughts can be difficult to read sometimes, as they are dark and intrusive, I believe that Mac tried to make her representation of Maeve's anxiety as accurate as she could. Ultimately, I believe she was successful. Which is very cool because many times I have to report that authors missed the mark entirely in mental health books.
I also thought that the representation of girls who love girls in this book was wonderful. I am not gay myself, and therefore I really don't have the same say in whether or not Maeve's relationship was an honest representation of a gay relationship. However, it did feel honest and not flashy, which was nice. Sometimes the relationship was awkward from a writing standpoint. The emotions didn't seem to flow in the way that regular human emotions flow. I would argue that Maeve moved on from her ex very quickly. But again, I don't really have much experience in this, so I can't say.
Along with the occasional lack of or unrealistic feeling of the characters emotions, there were also times where I felt like 10 Things may have been trying to cover too many topics all at once. There is a delicate balance between trying to cover all of these really important topics and also being able to leave room to dive into each of the topics to their full extent. While I felt that all of the issues that 10 Things discussed were important, I would have also been happy with covering fewer subjects to a deeper extent.
In the end, I thought that 10 Things I Can See From Here is an important read and provides many different perspectives on various issues plaguing our generation at the moment, many of which aren't discussed in young adult literature enough if at all.

I loved everything about this book.

The characters were well built and very personable; relatable. I enjoyed seeing the world through their eyes.

The romance was cute and built up well; no insta-love or anything like that. It was realistic and quite sweet.

The family drama portion of the book was enjoyable as well. I liked that the main character had issues with her father right from the start, but things were settled and thought out throughout the book and, of course, a happily ever after is never a bad thing :)

Thank You to the Publisher for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I requested this because of 2 things:

1) Lesbians

2) Anxiety Rep

What honestly made me not love this book was that Maeve’s anxiety attacks and thoughts were closely related to my own, so reading this book had to be done in small doses to prevent myself from going into a full-blown attack on the bus.

To anybody else that has anxiety, just, keep that in mind?

Oh, okay. Also. Other negative that I was just...meh about:

I actually quoted this book when referencing language that represented girls tearing down girls in one of my journalism classes. Maeve has a very particular idea of femininity and what qualifies an actual “girl”--where she could never fall for her school friend who was fat, wore silly shirts, and was practically a nerdy boy.

( Edit: Other reviews point out the Biphobia that I completely missed trying to prevent my own anxiety attacks. Biphobic lesbians? No thanks. I added this comment here because it’s obvious that Maeve also has an unnerving qualification of who exactly qualifies as queer. )

While the story was easy to follow through between Maeve (and my own) bouts of anxiety, I wasn’t overtly impressed with what I read. Removing the factors that I cannot safely judge without being mean/rude--there’s not much to talk about in regards to the book. Maeve’s father is an ass. Her mother is weird af for leaving the country with her boyfriend to be saviors of some place.

However, Maeve’s stepmom and step brothers are honestly just really interesting and they are the only redeeming things of this book.

Actually, note:

Maeve id’d Salix as a Queer(TM) by a ‘Friends of Dorothy’ pin/patch/whatever which is such a weird, aged reference?? However, I have started paying more attention to people’s (read: cute girls’) backpacks and finding queer pins up the wall so that’s nice, I guess?

I’ll probably have to say it’s about 2.5, leaning more heavily to 2 because of my obvious bias against the constant anxiety I had reading this and biphobia (I’m not down for any biphobia and I know I’m hella bad at recognizing it at first, so y’all need to save me).

I was so excited to read this book, but I just couldn't get through it. The writing style, characters, and plot didn't work for me.
Maeve whined about almost everything, and I couldn't get a feel for her personality beyond the fact that she had anxiety.
Her father didn't seem to care very much about her anxiety. She was staying in Canada for an extended period of time, but he didn't seem to consider the fact that she needed a therapist and/or medication.
The romance was very unromantic to me. Everything happened so quickly and suddenly that I didn't have time to emotionally connect with the relationship.
The book was sadly, very forgettable, and I just didn't care what was happening.

Knopf Books for Young Readers and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of 10 Things I Can See From Here. This is my honest opinion of the book.

Maeve Glover's struggle with anxiety has tinged her life with a cloud of darkness, but her new girlfriend Salix is undeterred in her determination to help her. During one such panic attack, Salix gives Maeve a task to find 10 things that she can see, thus giving her a visual way of lessening the effects. While her parents and stepmother all try to help in their own ways, Maeve has a coping mechanism that to some may seem morbid or counterproductive. With her twin six year old brothers Owen and Corbin to provide Maeve a much needed rest from her own thoughts, will she be able to calm herself enough to enjoy the life she has?

The unconventional lives of her parents leaves Maeve in a place where anxiousness rules most of her days. When her stable parent leaves her with the unreliable one for six months, will Maeve be able to cope? The author does a good job of capturing a teenager with acute anxiety. Maeve's story is compelling, as her stress and panic levels rise. The book was very successful in that it shows how one person learns to deal with her issues. Although going through such extreme anxiety without the benefit of medication may not be the norm in today's society, this book actually gives readers who are suffering some coping mechanisms that may help.

The relationship portions with Salix were fine, but the book would have been better, in my opinion, if the romance part stayed in the background. The emotional connection between Salix and Maeve was essential to the story, but the romance was not. This YA novel may appeal to readers who like realistic fiction and LGBT romance.

A trip to Haiti presents all kinds of possible dangers. First there's the plane ride there, which statistically offers tons of possible dangerous outcomes. Then there's the fact that it's another country. One with a history of earthquakes. And finally there's the fact that Maeve's mother will be there with her new boyfriend while Maeve spends six months living in Vancouver with her dad.

Maeve's anxiety is a part of her. And sometimes it gets to be too much. Six months with her dad shouldn't be a big deal. But it is. It's six months away from her home, away from her mom. Six months with her dad and his very pregnant wife, who's planning a home birth (which Maeve is all too aware can be rife with complications), and her twin brothers in an apartment that isn't her own.

But then Maeve meets a girl, and things start to look up. And then Maeve's father falls off the wagon, and things start to look not so up.

Maeve is compellingly charming at times. But she also becomes a bit too much at times as well. Her penchant for dire statistics is actually one of the endearing qualities, for me anyway. See, I'm kind of a worrier who fixates on worst case scenarios - so I can empathize just a little with Maeve.

But Maeve's awareness of her issue and her coping strategies made it a little hard to get behind her when she started to go over the top with it. And while things with her parents aren't great, she actually does have pretty good support from her stepmother and her little brothers. Her relationship with the latter is actually quite wonderful, but her inability to realize what she has in her stepmother is actually part of Maeve's bigger issue.

Of course, going into the story it's made very clear that Maeve is dealing with something she's not really ready to face head on. Something concerning her best friend, Ruthie. And so, at the heart of it, Maeve is actually, utterly lonely. She's also feeling just a little bit abandoned by the person who knows her best - her mother. And while all teens (and I'm pretty sure it's ALL teens) fight with their parents, her dad breaking his five year sobriety doesn't help one bit.

10 Things I Can See From Here isn't all family drama, but that is a large part of it. In fact, the story really is how Maeve deals with the maelstrom that is her life. One things it's not is a coming out story. Maeve has already decided and pronounced that she likes girls, and she's comfortable with it. But there is a romance aspect to the story. And it's one of the better parts of the book, lifting Maeve out of what could really be six months of despair.

While Maeve is dealing with some heavy issues, Carrie Mac does manage to keep much of the story light. I think readers in search of a contemporary read with a relatable character will find much to enjoy in Maeve and her story.

The first thing I love about this book, is LITERALLY the first page. It's titled "Stupid Things People Say" and it's a list of things people with anxiety are tired of hearing, like; "You are not your anxiety.", "It doesn't matter", "Don't exaggerate", "Just put it out of your mind.", "Why get upset about something so small?"... and maaaaany more.

The second thing I love is the way the chapters are written. The way the story flows makes it easy to follow and jumps from one situation to another without leaving you lost or in the air.

The third thing I love about this book is that, the development of the romance (a f/f romance!), doesn't take away from the story. Maeve is a girl that suffers from anxiety, and her issues aren't magically fixed by being in a relationship. (Seriously, we all know that mental issues don't get fixed by meeting "the one" or by being in a relationship.) I'm glad that while being in a relationship does help Maeve see certain things more clear, it is not a magical cure for anxiety.

Maeve's anxiety makes her overthink A LOT, and she will get super nervous and find ways to get discouraged to do things. Her anxiety makes her look for all the little details and reasons why something can go wrong, OH and she will find facts to prove it. THAT. IS. ME. *sigh* While I consider this book to be a quick read, I didn't read it as fast as I expected... Maeve was constantly giving us death facts and statistics and it made ME anxious! (Talk about getting into a book! But really... this book has some alarming statistics.)

The family situations in this book are deep. I love YA books that give meaning to the family, let it be a good relationship or a bad relationship, I believe the family should also be portrayed. With a mother that's away (on Haiti with her new boyfriend), a dad with drug problems, and a step mom that's close to losing her marriage, Maeve's family plays a big role in her development (and her anxiety).

I won't get into details of how things go, but I'll break it down simple; Since the beginning of the book, Maeve is 100% open about her sexuality, so you will not see a coming out story in this book, but you will find a story about a girl with anxiety falling in love, and dealing with many new things and family problems...

Overall, it's a light and great story. I would recommend it to anyone looking for good anxiety/mental health rep. and/or a sweet female-female romance.

I was gifted this book via Netgalley and also won a paperback ARC via a Goodreads Giveaway.

I got 60 pages in, roughly right under 20% into the book. I got to the point where I just didn't want to pick it up to continue it. I was very interested in this story because over the last year, I have developed anxiety that has started to interrupt my day-to-day life. I have had 2 panic attacks. I have read one book with a MC that suffered with anxiety and I really connected with that character because I now understand what it feels like. I really expected to connect with Maeve. In fact, she sounds like me to an extent...where she is constantly thinking about things that could go wrong. However, I don't know if it's the "voice" that it is written in, but it's so hard to read and not feel annoyed, if that makes sense. I, by no means, think Maeve is stupid for feeling the way she does or that her anxieties are silly. I have thought the same things as her. But the voice was difficult for me to connect with.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I though I would since it had a wlw main character with anxiety. I found her extremely annoying, and like her anxiety was mostly bothering other people and not making her life difficult. All the death facts were a pain to read and I mostly skipped them when she started thinking about how dangerous life is. The love interest was uninteresting, she showed up from nowhere and they just bumped into each other (in a stalker-ish way) until they started dating. The only part I enjoyed was the family dynamics, I'm glad the main character wasn't bitter against her stepmom and little brothers (enough in that front with her mother's boyfriend).
In general it felt bland and didn't hold my attention for long