Why I read it:  I picked this one up cheap when it was an Audible Daily Deal.

Content warning: The book contains themes of suicide, disordered eating, homophobia, abuse/neglect and self-harm.

What it’s about: (from Goodreads)  According to sixteen-year-old Zander Osborne, nowhere is an actual place—and she’s just fine there. But her parents insist that she get out of her head—and her home state—and attend Camp Padua, a summer camp for at-risk teens.

What worked for me (and what didn’t):  What a lovely surprise this audiobook was. I didn’t really know what to expect going in to be honest. I tend to be more adventurous with audiobooks though and the title and blurb promised some romance so I took the plunge.

While there is a romance, it isn’t the major theme of the book and it’s not even the most prominent relationship. It was sweet and I enjoyed it but Zander and Grover are only 16 so it wasn’t the fall-in-love-and-be-together-forever-and-ever-happily-ever-after I mostly read. It did end on a happy hopeful note but the point of the book wasn’t really about Zander having a HEA romantically.

The story is told in first person present tense which I don’t mind at all (in fact, I quite like it, especially on audio) but not everyone does, so it’s worth  mentioning here. Each chapter begins with a brief letter, most often from one of the campers home but the rest of the book is told from Zander’s POV. For most of the book, we don’t know why Zander is at Camp Padua, a summer camp in Michigan for at-risk teens. We know there’s something but not exactly what. We slowly find things out as the story progresses until the full truth is revealed. At times I found it slightly frustrating (because I’m impatient) but I understood why, from a narrative and story perspective, the reveal took time. Zander wasn’t going to tell anyone until she trusted them. And trust takes time. Also, the impact of why Zander came to camp is so much more once you’ve spent some time in Zander’s head.

Zander shares a cabin with Cassie, Katie, Hannah, Dori and counselor Madison. Cassie is an African American girl with a troubled home life. The listener slowly learns more about her as well. As Grover so neatly points out, Cassie tries to make people hate her so she can hate them back. She’s prickly and more than a little mean (after I learned more about her I understood the mean though). The other campers in the cabin are scared of her but over time, she and Zander get to be friends. And it is their relationship that is at the heart of the book I think.

Cassie has an eating disorder and some days she thinks she’s a boy, Bek is a compulsive liar, Dori has an eating disorder, Hannah cuts herself. (Grover, I’ll talk about a bit later.) The kids at Camp Padua are dealing with serious issues. Some of the therapies described in the book seem a little simplistic but the story is told from Zander’s 16-year-old perspective and for much of the time she’s fairly resentful about doing any therapy at all so that made sense to me. In many ways, it is the kids themselves who provide the therapy for one another in this story. (Perhaps not ideal in real life but it made for a good book.)

There is gender diversity, diversity in sexuality and race and even body diversity (Bek is overweight), all of which I appreciated. It seemed to me that such inclusion was an indicator that no-one is immune from mental illness. The kids can be cruel – particularly Cassie – in that way that children can be cruel but in that other thing kids can do so well, they move on from those slights or even embrace them somehow. Grover’s nickname for Cassie of “Sticks” is a comment on how thin she is but it is also emblematic of a relationship – something Cassie doesn’t have a lot of in her life. Cassie calls Hannah “Razor blades”. Cassie sometimes says things which could be considered homophobic. For what it’s worth, I saw it as more of Cassie being deliberately provocative rather than actually having any prejudice. For me it was just more of the same – using whatever what available to wound, not out of genuine malice but out of some messed up sense of self-preservation.

Grover is a wonderful character. His father has schizophrenia and Grover is convinced that he will develop it too. 10% of people with a schizophrenic parent will go on to develop the disease. He has seen, close-up, what happens when the illness manifests. He keeps a notebook of things he wants to remember while he is well. He’s insightful and has a very mature way of thinking but he also takes delight in messing with the camp counselor’s who ask for things in non-specific ways. “Any questions?” will get some interesting responses from Grover.

Grover is smitten with Zander from the beginning. Sometimes things he says or does have the potential to come across as creepy but it is clear Zander isn’t bothered by them so I went with that. In the end, I thought it was Grover being 16 and also him being funny rather than a jerk. Sometimes, it’s all in the delivery and in the facial expressions.

I enjoyed the sweet romance between Grover and Zander. There was one vaguely ambiguous non-explicit sex scene. It felt age-appropriate and it fit the book too.

I suppose the way the story ends up in respect to Cassie, it could be seen that there is a white savior vibe going on. I’m white so I’m not as sensitive to it as a Black person might/would be but for what it’s worth, the book did enough to establish that Zander and Cassie developed a very strong bond in the time they were at camp together and for me, it was that bond and how Cassie helped Zander process her own issues, how close they became and the particular family dynamic of the Osbornes which made me happy about the ending and not bothered. (Even though there’s some magical hand-waving about the logistics, I wanted for Cassie to have more than a group home so I was prepared to go with it. I am such a romance reader. I look for happy endings, of all kinds, everywhere.)

I did read a review which referenced Cassie being presented as every ugly stereotype of Black women. Maybe that’s right. I didn’t see Cassie that way but again, I’m white and I’m also Australian so my sensitivities and my knowledge are different. From my lens, I saw Cassie’s blackness as an essential part of her character, but not at all the reason for her difficulties. I didn’t think the book presented the proposition that she was so badly off because she was Black. It seemed to me that many aspects Cassie’s situation could easily have been applied to a white child; the experiences she had were about neglect and abuse – and those happen to children of all races and skin colours unfortunately. (Then again, Cassie was Black so maybe those things can’t be separated??) There’s a case to be made (though not in the same ways) that Bek was neglected and/or abused and Zander too so I didn’t feel that Cassie was entirely singled out for a background of neglect, albeit her story was different to that of the other campers. I took it that the author chose to include a Black character in a prominent role and I appreciated that. For all that Grover’s name is in the title, the book felt more about Zander and Cassie to me.

The very nature of the setting meant that all of the kids were going to be dealing with some heavy things. Still, I can’t say for sure there wasn’t problematic representation in the book. Cassie did seem to be the only Black character.. (She was certainly the only Black camper in the group who were named. There was a camp counselor by the name of Hayes who may have been Black but I didn’t catch a reference to his ethnicity when he was introduced during the listen and unlike a print book it’s difficult to search in an audiobook to check.)

I don’t know much about eating disorders or cutting or schizophrenia really. In many ways the book was about the relationships the kids had with each other, how they found hope in those friendships and perhaps the beginning of healing – at least for some of them. I don’t think the book presented the idea that the camp was a cure. Certainly, Cassie has a long way to go even once the story finishes. However, I did feel she was on a much better path and in a much healthier headspace by the end. In terms of mental illness in general I thought the representation was pretty good overall. If anything, the book explicitly stated that we all have “our crazy”, that we are all broken somehow. And that feels right to me.

What else? Caitlin Kelly was the perfect narrator for this book I think. She has a certain innocence to her voice and a youthfulness which translated well to the ages of the majority of the cast. She kept her performance fairly spare, letting the text speak for itself in many ways. She added emotion when appropriate but it was never overdone. In the wrong hands, there were parts of the book which could have fallen into melodrama and it would not have served the story to do so. Ms. Kelly kept well away from that and I appreciated it.

When I first started listening to The Odds of Loving Grover Cleveland it was more on a whim than anything else and I wasn’t committed to doing more than sampling it. But the story and the narration both drew me in and kept me listening. And, by the end, I was very glad I’d decided to give this one a try.

Grade: A-

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