Everything Here Is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee

Miranda is the older sister, and the most responsible. Lucia is younger and unpredictable; her impulses are huge and, often, life changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts hearing voices, it is Miranda who must find a way to reach her sister. Miranda leaves her own life in Switzerland to rescue her sister, but does she want to be rescued? The bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans - but what does it take to break them? Told in alternating points of view, Everything Here Is Beautiful is the story of a young woman's quest to find fulfilment and a life unconstrained by illness.

As the older sister of a sibling with a mental illness, I resonated so deeply with the characters within this novel.

The author beautifully relayed the chaos and its effects from all angles and I can't tell you how much I appreciate her exploring those corners.

This is a good book, depicting the helplessness and the burden of living with a permanent mental condition like bipolar disease or schizophrenia. How family members or loved ones of someone afflicted live in constant fear of a re-emergence of the condition, and how their constant worry and tutelage brings ill-will into those relationships. And this is also a book about the unexpected bonds you make with people, forged in shared misery and love for others.

I haven't encountered many fictional tales about the reality and the strain of dealing with mental health issues, so I really appreciate this book. It was well told, yet I wished it would have taken a path a bit bolder, by being more experimental, or more dramatic in its writing style. There's something about a lot of the contemporary English-language literature these days, that just feels slightly too clean, too detached.

The best novel I've read about the toll living with mental illness takes on family members. So exquisitely empathetic and yet unflinchingly honest - at times it took my breath away. I felt every page of this book.