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Mifanwy is a Boffins Books YA Club member. Mifanwy blogs at Miffology.
There have been many occasions in which I have been called heartless for not crying at books such as The Fault in Our Stars and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. Invincible, however, a book with similar themes, nearly ended my no-tears steak, and I consider it to be a 5/5 star book that you should get yourself a copy of immediately.
Evie is a 17 year old terminally ill cancer patient who is certain that she will not live much longer, and as such has decided to cancel her treatment, deeming it pointless. However, not long after she cancels her treatment, she begins a miraculous recovery, and soon she moves out of the hospital. After leaving the hospital, Evie feels like a fish out of water. As someone who wasn’t meant to live longer than a month or two, she now has no idea what to do with herself, how to function out of hospital, and how to live. She feels like her family and old friends are suffocating her with their pity and over-protectiveness, and she becomes rebellious and foolish in her attempts to stop all this and to live her own life. Things become dangerous when she turns to drugs and alcohol as a crutch for her depression, and she finds herself addicted.
Reading Invincible is like being viciously slapped over the face with a harsh dose of reality, with an unforgiving plot and heartbreakingly flawed characters, in particular Evie herself. Evie was such a hard character to like. She was in a constant downward spiral, with her addiction to drugs and alcohol, her disrespect towards her parents, and her lack of trying in school. In general, I find when a character is hard to like, the book itself is hard to like, but in this case, the opposite was true. Invincible hooked me in and didn’t let me go until I turned to the last page, which happens to end on a cliff-hanger leading to book two, which will be out later this year.
This book left me grief-stricken, as it was heartbreak after heartbreak, yet I loved it all the way through, as dark and gritty as it was. Evie’s character development, although negative, was incredibly realistic, and the storyline was utterly believable. It also gave a deep insight into the lives of cancer patients, and kids who spend their lives in hospital. Invincible is definitely one of the best books I’ve read in a while. I can’t wait for the sequel, to have my heart broken all over again.
