CLICK ON BANNER FOR ENTIRE TOUR SCHEDULE
SYNOPSIS
***Recommended for ages 17+ for adult themes and frequent use of harsh language.
There are two things I want out of my freshman year of college: to hook up with confusing hottie Jared and to chug some beer as soon as possible.
Getting wasted is like purely medicinal freedom. I murder my secret and constant soul sucking fear and tense nervous body beneath 17 glorious shots of pseudo-sanity. And destroying self-conscious crazy me reveals a sexy confident stranger who likes to try wild new things.
Then there’s the Jared complication, the guy with the Halloween costume that features his ripped and naked chest. It’s an attraction I can’t deny. Too bad I can’t understand what he wants because half the time we’re making out on the dance floor and the other half we’re screaming at each other about whether or not I’m a party slut.
And as the year party-crashes to an end, my drunk-scapades and severe panic attacks want me to pay up, big time. What little sanity I started out with is clinging by a thin thread and when that thread snaps, I’m lying on the cold basement floor of my parents’ house, a loaded hand gun kissing my hot tear streaked forehead.
As I’m craving the freedom and soothing blackness of death, he calls and I open up like a fire hose of self-hating hot mess. After we hang up, I make a choice.
PURCHASE LINKS: AMAZON KINDLE / AMAZON PAPERBACK
REVIEW BY MICHELLE
I have to start off by giving the author a round of applause for taking a risk and writing about a topic that is very personal and very difficult.
That being said, this book was hard for me. I admit that I don’t know much about suffering from panic attacks. I did learn a lot about what it can be like to suffer with them and that was very enlightening.
However, I was left feeling a bit torn about a few things. For example, Victoria’s parents knew her situation and it seems her mother even suffered from it so I found it a little odd that no steps were taken towards medication. How it got so far as to end in a suicide attempt when it seemed she had a support system was beyond me.
Jared is an interesting character. At times I really love him but there were some times where I wanted to throttle Jared. I was like:
Honestly though, at the end of the book I realized that the author wrote a realistic character considering his age. I think the ways he treated and reacted to Victoria were very real but that didn’t make them any less frustrating.
For me, one big challenge was the way it was written. You had to pay attention to the dates on the chapters because they do jump around and you have to piece that timeline together. I had to go a few times because I was like:
I did like seeing the flashbacks to her childhood. Those were the times where my heart ached for Victoria the most.
I do think this book would be a good one for you to read if you are interested in seeing an in depth look of what it feels like to live with panic attacks. However is it is very raw and I think that if you don’t really understand panic attacks then it can be a difficult read at times.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Passionate about writing, graphic design, creativity. Fueled by the light and dark. Beauty, color, euphoria, artistic frenzy, depression, panic, anxiety.”
What you see on the outside is not what you get on the inside. On the outside, Victoria Sawyer is polished, confident, put together, but on the inside things are a bit different. She’s creative, thoughts whirling, anxious, alternately depressed and happy or self-critical and confident, energetic, charismatic, cranky and panicked.
She has suffered from panic attacks, anxiety and depression since the age of 10 and has been writing for just about as long. Her love of writing started as journal entries as therapy and eventually morphed into a melding of fact and fiction. Sometimes writing drives her to drink or drinking drives her to write or sometimes it’s depression, anger, mental illness or love.
Angst is a story she has always wanted to tell, a fiction retelling of her own struggles as a college freshman. Her goal is to be completely honest about mental illness and life’s struggles and to reduce the stigma of mental disorders. She hopes to follow up with a second book featuring Victoria in the future. For more Wicked Victoria, visit her blog: http://www.angstanxietypanic.wordpress.com
CONTACT VICTORIA: GOODREADS / WEBSITE / FACEBOOK / TWITTER / GOOGLE+
GIVEAWAY
Great Review!