A Semi-Definitive List Of Worst Nightmares by Krystal Sutherland

Esther Solar and her family are cursed, cursed to die by their worse fear.  This is the reason Esther gives us for her twin brother being afraid of the dark, her father having locked himself away in the basement for the last 6 years and her mother being really, REALLY worried about bad luck.  In order to escape the curse she always wears a costume - red riding hood one day, Eleanor Roosevelt another.  She has also decided that if she writes her fears down she will be safe from them.

If you think her family is a touch odd then the people she chooses to surround herself with are also a little bit strange.  Her best friend since childhood is an elective mute.  There is also the pickpocet and lock picker extraordinaire Jonah Smallwood that she knew once and meets up with again in unauspicious circumstances.

Although I am not the target audience for this book - been some considerable number of years since I qualified under the Young Adult category - I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Although the subject matter dealt with within these pages is the deterioration of the family through illness and alcohol abuse and the parallel themes of addiction, death and mental health are very serious Krystal Sutherland has a deft hand and a wonderful voice.

Funny, warm and startlingly frank you start caring about the Solar family with all their eccentricities.  The descriptions of their struggles to deal with their own problems and even how some of these problems are more their way of blocking out the hurt of others so that it all becomes easier to bear.  The main characters are fully fleshed and believable.

This is one book that should be promoted to all students in High School and it is not too bad an idea if their parents pick up a copy and read it as well.

I RECEIVED A FREE COPY OF THIS BOOK FROM READERS FIRST IN RETURN FOR AN HONEST REVIEW.

**Review originally published August 19th, 2017**