e-ARC, 336 pages
Release Date: May 26, 2015Published by: Katherine Tegen BooksStand-aloneSource: Edelweiss (A copy of this book was sent to me via Edelweiss and the publisher. This in no way shaped my opinion on the book. A huge thanks goes to both Edelweiss and HarperCollins.)For fans of: Contemporary Romance, Health Issues, Chick-lit, Sparkly Covers, Realistic Fiction, Sstand-alones, YAFrom the author of The Beginning of Everything: two teens with a deadly disease fall in love on the brink of a cure.At seventeen, overachieving Lane finds himself at Latham House, a sanatorium for teens suffering from an incurable strain of tuberculosis. Part hospital and part boarding school, Latham is a place of endless rules and confusing rituals, where it’s easier to fail breakfast than it is to flunk French.
There, Lane encounters a girl he knew years ago. Instead of the shy loner he remembers, Sadie has transformed. At Latham, she is sarcastic, fearless, and utterly compelling. Her friends, a group of eccentric troublemakers, fascinate Lane, who has never stepped out of bounds his whole life. And as he gradually becomes one of them, Sadie shows him their secrets: how to steal internet, how to sneak into town, and how to disable the med sensors they must wear at all times.
But there are consequences to having secrets, particularly at Latham House. And as Lane and Sadie begin to fall in love and their group begins to fall sicker, their insular world threatens to come crashing down.
Told in alternating points of view, Extraordinary Means is a darkly funny story about doomed friendships, first love, and the rare miracle of second chances.
*MY THOUGHTS*
“Nick grinned hugely as he slung a plate of scrambled eggs onto my tray. Before I could protest, he’d topped the scrambled eggs with hard boiled ones. The damage was done. I’d been egged. And so, with Nick egging me on, I added a stack of toast.”
3%
Tuberculosis is running rampant around the world. Lane is a teen who catches the disease and is sent to Latham, a boarding school and hospital put together to help make teens who catch the disease feel better. While there he meets Sadie and they fall in love. Their entire group feels like they may be sick, but they are bigger than the disease and it won’t touch them. Until they start becoming sicker. And then, everything seems to happen nonstop.
“I’m just so tired of everyone going on about how I’m sick, and how sorry they are. I can’t remember the last time anyone had a normal conversation with me.”
29%
Schneider’s writing style was so good. She brought forth every emotion with this one. I was able to laugh, cry, get mad, sympathize, just everything. I loved that I was able to feel all these things. It was such a well rounded book with well rounded characters and I loved it. As a contemp there wasn’t much action, but at the same time, there was always something going on, which was the cause of playing on all the emotions. And lets not even get to the amount of passages I highlighted while I was reading this. I really wanted to highlight the entire book!
“Here’s a secret. […] There’s a difference between being dead and dying. We’re all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this plane wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.”
29%
As for the characters, I LOVED them all. Especially Nick. He was the comedic relief of the story. The comedic relief that was desperately needed. Everyone in this book was so depressed about the disease. Sadie’s group of friends made the best of their time at Latham. It was what kept the story moving. I’m more of an action/plot driven reader, so it was nice to have a look at how characters can really make the story. Too see how lively they werre knowing that they were still preparing themselves for the worse made all the difference.
“I liked Sadie’s theory about living and dying being the same thing, and I wanted to believe it. But the thing was, although I might not have been dying, I wasn’t really living either.”
30%
What I didn’t like, was the fact that I felt like I was reading a book I had already read. It felt exactly like The Fault in Our Stars, So much so I called exactly how the ending would be. In other words, it was predictable. I wanted it to end differently, just to say something from it was different, but no. I tried my hardest to not compare the two of them, but in cases where things are so predictable, it was hard not to.
“[…] the ting about being erased is that first you have to leave a mark.'”
51%
Although I liked this story, I could’ve like it more. With a few small changes I could’ve liked it so much more. But with Schneider’s amazing writing and her perfect characters, I still enjoyed this so much.
