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A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2021! A gritty, heart-wrenching novel of disability, pain, belonging, loss, addiction, and friendship.
Everything was fine before. When Eve and Lidia could hide their physical differences inside goofy Burger Hut costumes. When Lidia shook Eve up and Eve made Lidia laugh. When Lidia was there.
Everything is different now. Cut open . . . rearranged . . . stapled shut, Eve is left alone to recover in a world of pain and a body she no longer recognizes. Her only companions being a bottle of Roxanol and an infuriating (but cute) neighbor, Eve strikes up a relationship—and makes a pact—with the devil. Sacrificing pieces of a place she doesn't know to return to a place she does. What will she discover when she unravels her past? And is having Lidia back worth the price?
In verse and prose, Fix paints a riveting picture of a teen struggling to find herself and move forward with her life in a sea of opioids, regret, grief, and hope.
About the Author
J. Albert Mann is the author of middle grade and young adult novels. Her stories and poetry have appeared in Highlights for Children, once winning the magazine's annual Fiction Contest. Simon & Schuster's Atheneum Books for Young Readers is set to publish her next work of historical fiction about the early life of Margaret Sanger, and Bloomsbury published her early middle grade series Sunny Sweet, written under the name Jennifer Ann Mann. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults, where she also obtained the Picture Book Intensive certificate. She is the author of Scar: A Revolutionary War Tale, What Every Girl Should Know, The Degenerates, and Fix.
My main character, Eve and I have a lot in common. We both lived in bodies very different than most folks. We both suffered years of chronic pain. We both endured a body-altering surgery. And we both believed a new body would change everything. Instead, we both found ourselves falling toward a place called rock bottom.
Fix is the story of Eve’s fall.
Anyone who has dealt with chronic pain, grief, or addiction has contemplated rock bottom. (I do not include depression/mental illness because this is something very different.) Rock bottom is a place where the pain stops, or at least stops getting worse. It’s an end of sorts. A place where Eve might lie on the cold surface of despair and rest. But those of us who’ve experienced the fall toward rock bottom have discovered it doesn’t exist. There is no bottom to pain or grief—there is only the falling.
“This searing but gorgeous read entwines poetry and prosein its descriptions of a friendship gone awry.”—Buzzfeed
“Intense, unflinching…a gratifying story.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A devastating and beautiful read that clearly shows the complexities of addiction, fear, love, and friendship.”
—SLJ
"Eve’s physical and emotional experiences resonate, and the supporting cast…are vividly drawn in this hopeful contemporary novel."—Publishers Weekly
“The insidiousness of substance dependency, grief, and pain weave together in this incredibly powerful, all-consuming, captivating novel.”
—The Tiny Activist
"Fix by J. Albert Mann is a haunting, heartbreaking story about addiction, internalized ableism, friendship, and what we're willing to do for the people we love. Written in a combination of achingly raw prose and verse, this book will make you lose yourself and then find yourself again in the process. Mann crafts a lacerating picture of grief, addiction, and friendship that will stay with you long after you close the lid.”
—Alaina Lavoie, Communications Manager, We Need Diverse Books
