Aysel (rhymes with Gazelle) wants to die, and finds a suicide partner in Roman. They both have their reasons to die, but as their decided dates draws nearer, it's harder and harder to remember those reasons.

At first I couldn't really buy that Aysel was depressed, because, idk, it didn't really seem like it, but then again I guess that's kinda the point? Depression doesn't really make sense and you can't always tell when someone has it. And it wasn't grief-fueled, in the same way that Roman's wish to die is, so she's very much not wearing her emotions on her sleeve.

But it was good. I thought the pacing was nice and the story were handled in the best way it could, given the subject. I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone who finds suicides the least bit triggering, but to anyone else I would definitely consider it a worthwhile read. It ends with hope, and that's how I prefer it. ( )

Wow, this book. Such difficult topics, depression and suicide, and author Jasmine Warga did such an amazing job really delving into Azul's head and showing how deeply depression poisons every thought and drags down every moment. Just beautifully rendered. I loved the analogy of the black slug. I really thought that was the strongest aspect of the book. How well Azul is crafted for us and how we watch her experience her relationships with others in her life.

And Roman, her suicide partner from the internet (this is such a hard topic that I wondered if I even wanted to read it for a while) is so hard to read because his story is just as sad as Azul's... it's a really sad book, and yet it's so well written and evocative and I absolutely couldn't put it down. 5/5 stars.

Trigger warning: discussions of suicide and attempted suicide

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader. ( )

I liked what this book was trying to do, but I really didn't like this book very much. My rating is probably closer to 2.5 stars. I have been depressed very recently (though never suicidal) and in some parts of this book I felt like it was written for people who have never been depressed so that those people can talk about how realistic and and hard hitting this book was. I just couldn't relate to this book as much as I could in other books about the topic. I also hated the relationship in this book. It felt like they were just pressuring each other into killing themselves and fighting and then all the sudden they were in love. as someone who as been depressed they was they both got over wanting to commit suicide just seemed to be a convenient plot device and not very realistic. Over all I think the reason I didn't like this book was because of my personal experiences with depression. I think that there may be people with depression that had experiences close to the ones of the main characters and can really, deeply relate to this story, but I am not one of those people.
*I listened to the audio book for this and it was fine, but I didn't love the narrator and I though some of the accents she used for characters were weird.* ( )

This story deals with depression and suicidal thoughts. It's about these 2 teenagers, a girl named Aysel and a boy named Roman, who for different reasons have decided that they want to commit suicide and have signed up to this website called Smooth Passages where you can try to find a suicide partner. They find each other and the more time they spend together planning their suicide pack, the more Aysel begins to question if this is something she really wants to do and must decide not only if she wants to go through with it or not but also if she wants to try and convince Roman to live as well. ( )

I read this entire thing in one day and really wanted to like it, but I'm personally pretty tired of people acting like a romantic relationship is the answer to all of life's problems.

Being in a relationship doesn't make you any less sick, any less depressed, and promising young adults that all they have to do to not be sad is find The One is irresponsible and damaging. ( )