The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

Written by Shaun David Hutchinson; Illustrated by Christine Larsen

Simon Pulse, 2015, Ages: Young Adult 13+

This book is about a character named Andrew whose family dies and he does not. He ends up living in a part of a hospital that had a wing that is abandoned during the renovations in the Roanoke Hospital. Andrew serves for the hospitals cafeteria and gets paid under the counter.He likes to spend his time in the ER or the pediatric department of the hospital. Even though Drew is not sick or needs treatment, he likes to be there because that is the last place that he was able to see his family.One day, a guy his age named Rusty was taken into the ER. He was burned by fire by his own classmates. Rusty had been bullied by his classmates for a while, but they took it very far. Drew is not sure why, but he feels some kind of connection with Rusty. Rusty and Drew are both characters that are gay too. Drew likes to hangout with many of the patients that have cancer. In Drew's world, everyone has seen to much suffering and also death.

This book was written in first person and was also written very well by the author. I felt that the writing style was very rich and just made the readers want to dive in and read it. She made the book easy to understand and you were able to feel the same feelings that the main character was having. It made you feel like as the reader, you were there in the book with them. The author's writing would not let you look away because he described, in detail, the humiliation that Rusty had to go through. It is sad to read, but the details make you want to read more because the author is very detailed throughout the book.

The book had a comic inside of it, which made the book even more interesting. I thought that the illustrations were creepy and were also gross. Even though my feelings about the illustrations were bad, the actual illustrations were very good. I believe they were perfect for this book, and Christine Larsen did a great job with them.

I thought that this was a great book. I loved reading it and felt interested and wanting to read more the whole time. I would recommend this book to others because it was very detailed and made you think a lot about being in the shoes of the main character, Andrew Brawley. The subject of the book is very intricate, it will make you want to keep reading because the writing is so good. I think that middle school students or even high school students would like this book because it had characters around their age that are very easy to connect with. There are also many realistic things about this book that students could connect to. 

Review by Hayley Sheffield