Book Review of When We Collided by Emery Lord

I checked out When We Collided by Emery Lord from my local library after encountering it on a roundup of YA books that do a good job portraying characters with mental illness. However, it did not live up to that promise, which was surprising, because the author's note alludes to this being an #ownvoices title. Ultimately, it felt like a  less well-written Sarah Dessen novel mixed with many plot points shamelessly copied from Party Of Five. The cover design was a disappointment to me. With Vivi's keen interest in fashion and her job at the pottery studio, and the picturesque vacation town setting, I feel like there were many aspects from the plot to draw on that would've been visually pleasing while still related to the story.

Vivi is staying with her mom in Verona Cove for the summer and working at a paint-your-own-pottery studio. She loves vintage fashion, and often sews her own clothing and undertakes other creative projects. She also has bipolar disorder. Jonah is helping to take care of his younger siblings and keep his large family together, as well as trying to keep the family's restaurant running in the aftermath of his dad's sudden death. His mom is mostly non-functional, due to grief-induced depression. When We Collided is the story of Vivi and Jonah's relationship over the course of a summer.

Aside from weak writing, plot and logic inconsistencies, and a general feeling that most of the aspects of this book were shamelessly taken from other sources and smashed together, my main complaint about When We Collided is how Emery Lord dealt with bipolar disorder and mental illness through the character of Vivi. The author's note is written in such a way that makes me think this is an #ownvoices book, inspired, at least in part, by Lord's own experiences with mental illness. That's why I found her free usage of words like crazy and insane when describing Vivi shocking. More than that, Vivi is written like just your average MPDG YA character: she has a flair for original and vintage fashion, she's impetuous and moody, she breezes into the life of a guy with real substance and shakes everything up, seemingly just because she can. 

This treatment of Vivi's character--and of Jonah's responses to her behavior--made the whole story feel like one tired YA trope, instead of a true look at what it means to be in a relationship with someone who has bipolar disorder. Vivi doesn't come across as an empathetic character who has a health challenge--she comes off as selfish and immature when she leverages charm and originality to get away with everything she does. To me, When We Collided didn't read as a YA summer relationship/romance-y type novel that also dealt with serious issues, as much as it read as kind of a horror story: Jonah got hooked by Vivi, and then I waited on the edge of my seat to see just how much she was going to wreak havoc on his already stressful life. It felt to me like Jonah was Vivi's victim, more than he was her love interest. I feel that's entirely the wrong way to present a character with bipolar disorder, and a relationship between that character and another one. For those reasons, I absolutely don't recommend When We Collided by Emery Lord.