Girl Against the Universe

This novel of a teenage girl afflicted by PTSD in reaction to numerous unlikely tragedies in the course of her short life is a rather charming tale of first love and self-healing that felt just a little unbalanced (and I don't mean mentally).

The relationship between the narrator and Her Love Interest is really well done but her interactions with her new best friend seem forced; in fact, the character of Jade is sadly underdeveloped and I was aggrieved she ended up getting so little attention (her first appearance seemed so promising!). The psychiatrist, too, got less play than I thought he should, as he kind of disappeared once the story got rolling. On the other hand, I was expecting the step-father to be a total background prop and was most gratified to be wrong. And every so often, the readability of the story is put into a sharp contrast by a discordantly chunky paragraph of pointless detail, usually a trivial detail that should have been glossed over.

As a side note, I really felt like this book's title should have been a tennis pun (Courting Disaster maybe?); Girl Against the Universe sounds like a humorous, sci-fi epic about a chick with superpowers.