Words on My Walls: Book Review on Words on Bathroom Walls (Part Two)
This book was sadly not as interesting as I thought it would be. Now don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy reading it, however, I was not entirely happy with the overall result.
If I could give this book a rating, it would probably give a 7 out of 10. The idea and concept of this book was really good and honestly, the reason why I wanted to read it, however, the fact that it was a Young Adult piece of fiction is probably what ruined its potential.
If you haven’t read my post on this book from earlier, I’d recommend reading it for some context. To sum up what I said in there, pretty much this book focused on the daily struggles of a teenager who had schizophrenia, or at least it did in the beginning.
As I have said before, this to me sounded like a great topic to read about because of the world’s huge focus on mental health nowadays. And I seriously wished that the author, Julia Walton, would have focused on it a bit more.
Now, of course, I think that she still did a really good job of writing a teen novel. She had the naive and average hormonal main character, the cute and independent-minded love interest, that one awkward friend that no one gets along with, and the series of awkward racy sex.
I think overall in America the view and pleasure of having an erotic relationship has ruined the actual beauty of unconditional love. In Young Adult fiction, the story somehow always relies too heavily on the romance between the two main characters.
Now, I get that is what a lot of teens want to read about, but it’s been so redundant and overused that it’s just straight-up annoying. I don’t blame Walton for putting such a heavy hand on romance throughout the book, but it felt like we were not following the same story once Maya and Adam (the main character and love interest) started dating.
Other than the romance factor, there is only one other thing that seriously bothered me in this book. Yes, it does have to do with the romance a bit, and if you don’t want a spoiler then you can just skip ahead
Anyways, the first time Maya and Adam do it, is after rehearsing the play of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Now in the book Maya plays the role of Mary Magdalene, while Adam plays the role of Jesus. Now in general I am bothered by the play because the Crucifixion of Christ is a delicate subject for Christians and should not be put on as a child production, however, it is not my place to argue with what the Catholic church wants to do since I am not Catholic.
However, having sex in a Jesus costume in the backstage closet is extremely disrespectful to Christianity because it belittles the values of Christians. Those who follow Christianity believe that having sex should be done after marriage because it is a sacred part of human life, and that scene in the book basically says that the values of other religions are not worth respecting. If it were any other religion, their values would be at least respected.
Back to what I was saying, I think that the book had a lot of potential and would have been better if it were not written like any other Young Adult book. I still did enjoy the book and how it was set up to be as if Adam was writing a journal to his therapist.
I would have appreciated it more if the book did not depend heavily on Adam’s relationship with Maya, and would rather focus on Adam’s relationship with his parents and friends as well. I think it would have added more depth to Julia Walton’s book, but I guess we’ll never know.
Citation
Walton, Julia. Words on Bathroom Walls. New York, Ember, 2018.
