I think it is great that books about little known teen illness get written. Ricky has juvenile arthritis and is at times in a huge amount of pain. It affects her mobility and therefore restricts her ability to participate properly in many activities.

I had to push through the first half of the novel as her anger at being cursed with this illness made for unpleasant reading. She is 14, but some of her tantrums and hissy fits read more like a 10 year old. I know she is in pain and frustrated yet some of the lashing out sessions had a distinctly bratty feel about them.

As Ricky managed to push through the difficult adjustment period I felt more connected to her journey. She started to accept her illness and worked to make her life better through accepting help and advocating for herself in regards to her medical care. I ended up feeling quite proud of her. A good book about over coming adversity. ( )

Ricky is a teen trying to adjust to living with the severe arthritis she's developed in the past few months. Life has changed drastically for her in other ways lately, too: her parents have recently divorced, she's moved in with her father to be in an apartment with no stairs (much easier, in theory at least, for her painful condition), and this means a new school, too. But she has to walk the few blocks to school, plus face accessibility issues and bullying once she gets there, and it's just all too much. So she starts skipping school. And gets away with it for months. She eventually gets busted, then suspended for cursing at a teacher almost immediately after returning to school, which leads to some harsh reality facing: take on a pile of extra work - and extra after-school meetings with the teacher she hates - or don't pass ninth grade. But things do start changing for the better once she starts communicating just how difficult things have been for her to her parents, her new friends, and her new doctor.
I struggled with this one at the beginning because I had a hard time getting past Ricky's angsty angry bad attitude. She evolves and grows throughout the story, though, as do her parents, and it became obvious to me at some point (much later than it should have, really, silly me) that this was a major point to the novel: awareness and communication help all parties to change for the better. In the end, it's actually a very good read and makes some very good points about accessibility, the importance of communication (for kiddos to *tell* their adults what's going on with them openly and honestly and for the adults to listen and in general be more aware of what's possibly not being said). And it has reminded me of one of the reasons I love reading MG and YA books: it's been a fair while since I was that age and it's easy to forget how hard it can be and the specific challenges kids at those ages face. I feel that I gain and maintain much more empathy for young people by stepping into the shoes of these characters, and it helps me keep a healthy respect for what they face every day. Books matter. Books do important work. And this one and others like it in the genre do important work on me. ( )

Reviewed for NetGalley. For mature readers due to lots of the F word but it is in context as the user ( the main character) is in constant, chronic pain. Erica /Ricky has been diagnosed with juvenile arthritis only a few months after her parents split up. She is bitter and twisted and in a lot of pain, finding it difficult to walk and even get out of bed in the morning. The book opens with her living at her Dad's apartment and supposedly going to a nearby school to finish 9th Grade there instead of her home because the school has an elevator she can use between classes. We, the readers, soon discover that Ricky has been wagging and spending her days in her Dad's apartment in bed or in a hot bath and erasing the messages in his email and on his answering machine from the Principal. She has also changed her father's work details so that he looks like he is a Doctor not a dentist.
Ricky gets caught out though and is forced to catch up on all the work she missed including after school sessions with her least favourite teacher. There is the usual bullying - when a teacher tells the others to be nice to her because she has JA, the boys start throwing adds for adult diapers and nursing homes on her desk. There are a couple of nice guys though - Oliver - a boy who has had cancer, who empathises with her and takes an interest in her situation offering her advice about medical people and 2 cute boys who do drumming.
This is a story about someone and their family coming to terms with a horrible painful thing that has happened. Her father and mother struggle to cope with her pain- trying to take over everything she does, and Ricky copes by being angry and yelling and cursing at everyone ( inc her family) who try to help her.
She must learn to take control of her own reactions and her own medical needs, of her reality.
Great book from a first time author I believe who has had this insidious disease - as a sufferer of occasional bouts of normal arthritis, her descriptions of the feelings of pain are spot on and you feel deeply for the character and all she must cope with. Highly recommended. ( )