Tell Me Something When You Feel Something

Through multiple narratives and timelines, Tell Me When You Feel Something centres on unraveling the story of Vivienne Braithwaite, a high school student hospitalized after taking a pill at a party. There are three main perspectives: Vivienne, with a timeline starting weeks before the night of the party; Davida, her new friend, starting days after the party; and Tim, another new friend and love interest of Davida, with the same timeline as Davida. These perspectives and timelines are broken up by occasional police reports interviewing side characters in Vivienne’s life. While the mixing of timelines, perspectives, and police interviews helps create a tangled and obstructed storyline for solving the crime of what happened to Viv, it is also difficult to fully immerse yourself in the story and learn about the characters early on in the narrative.

The story starts with Davida’s going to the police station to talk about Viv and the events of the party. The reader learns that Viv is a well-liked teenage girl who took an opioid at a party and consequently collapsed and was hospitalized as a result. Davida is certain that there is more to the story which is the springboard for the puzzle of Viv being solved. As it turns out, Viv’s life isn’t as simple as Davida’s naivety creates it to be. Viv’s timeline, the build-up to the party, reveals that she is an alcoholic stuck in her parents’ messy divorce. She has a cab driver, Stu, repeatedly buy her alcohol and let her drink in the back of his cab to keep her safe. She steals alcohol from her mom’s liquor cabinet when she is desperate. In fact, her whole life is drenched in desperation; she wants to be the perfect child, the perfect girlfriend, and the perfect student, but cannot keep up with the demands of this perfect life. She reconnects with Davida at a simulated patient job where the girls act out different medical scenarios for med school students to work through, and they form a fast friendship. The two become a trio when Tim joins the group, and Davida and Tim start hanging out romantically. There are a host of supporting characters as well who become stuck in the web of Viv’s complicated life. Viv is a complex character, and the development of Davida, Tim, Stu, and more seems comparatively shallow. I wanted to know more, especially about Davida, to help support the trajectory of the storyline.

The pacing of this story starts off quite slow. It was only towards the end of the novel that I had moments of not wanting to put the book down—this was compounded by the switch in narratives that were sometimes frustrating as a reader. There were so many characters involved, and multiple side stories to follow, that the story occasionally strayed from the key plot point: what happened to Viv at the party. Viv’s alcoholism was difficult to read about, but it was an important representation of the pressure that teenagers can feel and the damaging coping habits that they can use to maintain a semblance of normalcy. This type of writing has been quite popular with the teenagers in my classes in recent years, and I am curious to hear their thoughts about the text.

This review would be remiss to not discuss the intense emotional topics covered in the text. There is drug use, alcoholism, mature language, and sexual abuse. Multiple characters’ struggles with mental health are taken advantage of throughout the story. Some teens may be able to navigate these subjects with little support, but they may be quite triggering for other young adults. I would not recommend this novel to a student without giving them the information they need to make an informed decision for their reading life.