Challenger Deep

By Brendan Shusterman and Neal Shusterman

National Book Award * Golden Kite Award Winner * Six Starred Reviews

A captivating novel about mental illness that lingers long beyond the last page, Challenger Deep is a heartfelt tour de force by New York Times bestselling author Neal Shusterman.

Caden Bosch is on a ship that's headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench.
Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.

Caden Bosch is designated the ship's artist in residence to document the journey with images.
Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.

Caden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny.
Caden Bosch is torn.

Challenger Deep is a deeply powerful and personal novel from one of today's most admired writers for teens. Laurie Halse Anderson, award-winning author of Speak, calls Challenger Deep "a brilliant journey across the dark sea of the mind; frightening, sensitive, and powerful. Simply extraordinary."

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320 pages

Average rating: 8.27

11 RATINGS

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Anonymous

Apr 26, 2023

10/10 stars

Shusterman, you had me at It's so embarrassing to be around someone whose entire mouth has turned blue.
description

This is EXACTLY how I think and why I will not eat artificially colored blue food. But this is not really relevant to the book as a whole.

This book is typical Shusterman - he writes like a boss. The writing style is unique and be-oo-tee-ful.

A few things to creep you out.
Some ships are infested with rodents. Others cockroaches. Ours has an infestation of free-range brains. The smallest are the size of a walnut, the largest are the size of a fist.

A little humor.
"Loosen up, Caden," he says. "Give yourself over to the universe." My father did not live through the sixties, but alcohol turns him from a registered Republican to a hippie wandering Woodstock.

Gorgeous.
"Live for the moment and the moment after," he once told me. "Never for the moment before."

Taking a sensitive topic and treating it with all of the respect (and honesty) it deserves.
I can't recall when it stops being a game. I can't recall when I begin to believe that the signs are giving me instructions.

There are thoughts in my head, but they don't really feel like mine. They're almost like voices.

You want to cry, too, for her lost landscape, but instead it comes out as a laugh, which makes you feel even worse, and so you laugh even louder.

The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind...so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?

4.5 Stars but bumping to 5

Gabrielle M

Jan 30, 2023

10/10 stars

While I don’t have experience specifically with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, I do have my fair share of experiences with adolescent behavioral health wards and mental illness treatment. This book intimately depicts the emotional experience of such treatment, the understanding that while you may be the one who is an inpatient your friends and family struggle too, and the reality that mental health treatment is still not perfect, comes with many drawbacks and side effects, but that despite all we still need to learn about the brain, there is hope. Life is worth living even with severe mental illness, even if at times it doesn’t feel like it. This novel expertly illustrates this hope to readers and additionally allowed me to recall memories of a difficult time in my life with compassion and separation.

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