The Art of Feeling

by Laura Tims

Overview

For fans of Jennifer Niven’s All the Bright Places and Meg Wolitzer’s Belzhar comes an emotionally thrilling tale of a friendship between a girl who feels too much and a boy who feels too little, as they discover that maybe pain can bring people together and not just tear them apart.

Samantha Herring has been in constant pain ever since the car accident that injured her leg and killed her mother. After pushing her friends away, Sam has receded into a fog of depression until she meets Eliot, a carefree, impulsive loner who, is unable to feel any pain at all. At first, Sam is jealous. She would give anything to not feel the pain she’s felt for the past year. But the more she learns about Eliot’s medical condition, the more she notices his self-destructive tendencies.

In fact, Eliot doesn’t seem to care about anything—except Sam. And as they grow closer, they begin to confront Sam’s painful memories of the accident, memories that hold a startling truth about what really happened that day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062317377
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	08/15/2017
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	384,521
File size:	812 KB
Age Range:	13 Years

Editorial Reviews

Tims’ sophomore book captures the emotions of young characters dealing with loss, pain, and depression. A heartfelt package that many will enjoy.

Booklist

Praise for PLEASE DON’T TELL

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Six months after the car accident that claimed her mother’s life and Sam Herring’s ability to walk unassisted and without pain, Sam is struggling to find the new normal. This is no easy task as her brother, Rex, uses her pain killers to get high; her father, in a daze, barely functions; her sister is on a memory-cleaning bender; and Sam has no friends to speak of. However, life begins to look better when Sam finds kinship with the mysterious Eliot Rowe. Perfectly awkward and the only other loner at school, Eliot offers Sam a new perspective on pain: he literally cannot feel it. As Sam helps Eliot interact with the world, Eliot helps her confront repressed memories of the accident. When she uncovers the shocking truth of that afternoon, Sam must decide whom to protect: her family or the other driver. The Art Of Feeling explores the nuances of grief and chronic pain through Sam’s first-person narration. Lost and disconnected, her family struggles with the absence of her mother and the loose ends of a hit-and-run accident. The author capably explores issues of identity and belonging entangled with chronic illness and disability and touches on the complexities of depression and grief. Sam and Eliot are both unique and likable, and readers will readily connect with them. While there are moments that feel unrealistic, the plot is fast-paced and compelling enough to appeal to a wide-range of readers. Reviewer: Courtney Huse Wika; Ages 12 to 18.

VOYA, October 2017 (Vol. 40, No. 4) - Courtney Huse Wika

08/01/2017
Gr 9 Up—This novel takes a well-worn but effective page from the handbook of rare disease and disaster YA romances. In this somewhat predictable but ultimately satisfying love story, Samantha—still coping with the death of her mother and the permanent injuries she sustained in a car accident—meets Eliot, who lives with congenital analgesia, a disease which leaves him unable to feel pain. Eliot and Samantha have some serious walls up as a result of their respective traumas, and their friendship-turned-romance seems partially born out of a need to protect someone outside of their own personal tragedies. The relationship is backlit by Eliot's role as the school's number one bullying victim which is perpetrated by resident drug dealer Anthony, a childhood friend of Samantha's who is revealed to have played a key role in her mother's death. Crisis is followed by crisis as the bullying escalates; but with a climactic and teary ending, the walls between the two protagonists start to crumble and healing begins. This novel will satiate the needs of the myriad fans of the box-of-tissues at your side teen drama. VERDICT Purchase where Jennifer Niven's and Nicola Yoon's books are popular.—Joanna Sondheim, Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, New York City

School Library Journal

2017-05-15
Six months after Mom's death in a car accident, Sam copes with a new disability from that accident, a cryptic boy, family dysfunction, and peer violence.Sam walks on crutches now. Pain regularly "whiplashes" up her leg, bringing with it shards of memory from that "firestorm of glass and steel"—the accident she doesn't remember. Her brother gets high and screams back and forth with their perky sister, while checked-out Dad eats junk food. Enter new boy Eliot, all "pale mystery, sharp-cheekboned stares, and supercilious slouching"—and verbal prickliness. Eliot has congenital insensitivity to pain—he feels no physical pain—but he also exhibits social peculiarity (far beyond awkwardness, well into hurtfulness) and emotional wounds; some of Tims' definitions of disability, trauma, and accountability are murky. Likewise with the antagonist: Anthony (a "magazine-blond, Polo-wearing" drug dealer with a Yale scholarship and a "coffee-soft polite threat voice") commits extreme violence wearing an expression of "nothingness" but is also merely "a boy scared of losing his image." Because she didn't save Mom, Sam's determined to save Eliot, however he acts. Her first-person voice is funny and absorbing. In this "upper-middle-class town in the whitest state in the country," whiteness is standard except that Mom was half Hawaiian (a detail that's never explicated). Wry and engrossing, though jumbled. (Fiction. 13-16)

Kirkus Reviews