Fix by J. Albert Mann

The Quick Cut: A teen girl struggles with post surgery life without her best friend. Emotions get messy when she starts looking to the past after spending more time with a neighbor. A Real Review: Thank you to Little, Brown Books for providing the ARC for an honest review. Sometimes the best friends you can have are those who can relate to what you're going through. It doesn't require you to have the same set of circumstances. The only necessity is going through similar experiences so that you can empathize with one another. For Eve, she used to have that in Lidia. Eve struggles with her back condition called scoliosis. It means that her spine has a curvature, which can cause pain and difficulty standing straight. Having her best friend Lidia helped her feel understood since she also struggled with her physical condition having lost a hand. These two used to be the closest of friends, spending their time together working at a local restaurant in costumes. Except now Lidia is gone and Eve is left to cope along with a bottle of painkillers and a neighbor. What went wrong? Can she ever get her best friend back? This book's summary describes it as a mystery, but it didn't read that way. Yes, the author holds back the reason why the two friends aren't talking until near the end. I hardly think that classifies this as a mystery. A better description would be that the book is about the falling out of two friends. The mix of standard writing and verse written prose did make reading a bit more interesting though. I can relate to what Eve is going through at a certain level. I had issues with scoliosis when I was younger (which disappeared after a growth spurt straightened out my spine). Back pain is one of those conditions that can be the most devastating because there is no good way to cope with it. If you have chronic back issues, you can feel that no matter what position you're in. That means it's easy to get addicted to painkillers and once that happens, life tends to get more complicated. Although what Eve goes through can be painful, she's also an extremely selfish person. It's not entirely clear why she feels so strongly about Lidia as she does, but her justification in her actions made me roll my eyes. I don't want to spoil the storyline, but what I will say is that Eve needs to learn how to respect her friend's feelings. If I were Lidia, I would have walked away from her as a friend too. A blend of writing styles that works well, but the character's reasoning for their actions don't. My rating: 3 out of 5