Review Book

Alorah Never-Ending Worries

Title: Alorah Never-Ending Worries

Author: @Amethyst_Alveres

Genre: Coming-Of-Age, Family, Mental Health, High School, Innocent girl meets bad boy,

Published: 2022

Book Status: Completed

Summary: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) causes a person to worry and cannot control the persistent worries and thoughts. High School Senior, Alorah, suffers from this condition and hides it away from family and friends. Then an interested old classmate, Julian, comes around to Alorah in her weakest moments during her G.A.D. episodes sparking a romantic chance between them. Should they pursue it or not?

Theme: Generalized Anxiety Disorder is manageable as long as you have a strong support group to be by your side. No matter how insignificant those intrusive thoughts are, please keep on moving forward.

Book Review: In "Alorah Never-Ending Worries," the title matches the protagonist's mental state of mind, but I suggest renaming the title similar to "Alorah's G.A.D." On the book cover is a grave tomb for Alorah, so I assumed the story would be a dark tale, but I was wrong. The author, Amethyst_Alveres, wrote a preface about the inspiration from her high school experiences and created many characters with challenging moralities. The question is, did the author achieve this in her story plot? No.

Unknowingly, to the readers, the author did not reveal that Alorah has mental health issues such as G.A.D. Instead, Amethyst_Alveres explores the symptoms of someone having a G.A.D. There are a couple of chapters that cater to Alorah's G.A.D. episodes and the symptoms such as sobbing, uncontrollable intrusive thoughts, paranoia of death, and separation anxiety from loved ones. The difficulties living with G.A.D. are eye-opening to me as I did not dwell deeply into those thoughts in my youth, and I focus on living in the present and accepting life and death is a natural cycle at Alorah's age.

One of the major problems is the main plot focuses on Alorah's family and mental health shift in favor of the subplot of Julian Hayes's romance with Alorah. When the author edits her work, hopefully, she plans to build Julian's character development and add more scenarios exploring Julian's "bad boy reputation" instead of stating and not showing anything. One scene in particular -irks me is the random scenario of Julian's former friends showing up to confront his relationship with Alorah in Anti-climate. There were little to no "expectations" from Julian's group of friends, parents, and classmates. His character build-up was flawed and needs to be polished and explore.

The second problem is the author did not meet her objective to explore the character's morality. I felt the problems were met with subtle manners. If Julian is supposed to be someone who banters and challenges Alorah's morality, I didn't see any of it. Instead, more of conveniently going along with Alorah's plans. I expect Julian to challenge Alorah's constant worry about death and life, perhaps convince Alorah to change her mindset but the author wrote him off as a silent teddy bear and allowed Alorah to not grow out of it. If anything, "grounded" is missing between all the side characters. Alorah is like the pavement and supposedly her friends and parents are the cornerstone but again, the author established them using "words" and a lack of actions. Julian being an outsider manages to dig deeper into Alorah but fails to challenge her. Amelia and Layla nag Alorah about their disapproval but, falls on deaf ears, I would think the two best friends would be the ones to uncover Julian's darkest secrets and chase away Julian into the haystacks. Alorah's parent's demeanor is lax around Julian and automatically accept him. At the least, the dad should have questioned Julian's morality and met his parent. Again, whose morality is being challenged in the story?? Because they all fall in the line of order. A push and shove and breaking away is part of maturity.

Otherwise, from those two problems for me, the story is overall enjoyable. I liked the story; the grammatical error is less, and the pacing of the story flows well. I recommend this story to teens and young adults because of the relatable moments in our high school lives. The basic romanticized bad boy falls in love with an excellent model student, who didn't fantasize about that kind of romance? The doting and loving parent dynamic is heartwarming. The scenery transition is smooth, and I became immersive in the story. Once in a while distracted by unestablished prior information.

Hook: Chapter 5

"If she's happy, I'm happy.

If she needs me to be beside her, I will be there.

"Mom, are you satisfied with having to achieve your dreams?" I asked. Mom was rarely home because she wanted to pursue her dreams in the hospitality industry. No, it's not about working in the hospital like the name, but working hotels, restaurants, and traveling.

It took mom a few years to get to the position she was in, and I remember dad telling me every night when I was a toddler that mom wanted to explore what it was like working hotels and restaurants in her managerial role. She wanted to experience what it is like working in different countries too..."

Rating: 7/10