Hannah Lin Kernal

We Pretend They're Fireworks Hannah Lin Kernal

You will love this book if
you love mental health awareness
you are a young adult
you're an advocate for representation

This book explores the intersections of
mental health awareness
the importance of interpersonal relationships
intersectionality

The core idea/main idea of my book is it is okay to reach out for help. To keep things to yourself is to make yourself more vulnerable to mental health issues. My hope for this book is that readers are more apt to reach out for help! It's so important to create support networks, whether the things that go wrong are "small" or gargantuan!

The coolest story I share in this book is Lacey Matthews finally getting the opportunity of getting to speak up. She gets assaulted and is terrified to think about being very open about it. It's an extremely vulnerable feeling for her, and she doesn't want to deal with being judged or feeling misunderstood. When she gets to talk to Sadie Clifford, someone who has experienced something remarkably similar to what Lacey has and who has recovered, Lacey starts to feel really heard and understood. She stops feeling alone. She stops feeling like she isn't allowed to speak up anymore.

This book will surprise readers because dystopian fiction rarely looks at the psychological effects of negative surroundings so directly. People bottling up their emotions can make them more likely to feel suicidal, can make them less likely to speak up when something important is going wrong, can make them less aware of warning signs for poor mental health or of what consent looks like, and on and on. This is a new twist on a genre that looks at issues that come up on an individual level, rather than only the issues with an entire governmental system.