REVIEW: CRAZY LOVE YOU, BY LISA UNGER

 

 

 

In a small town in New York named The Hollows, everyone knows your business, and if you have a problem of any kind, it follows you.

Like having a mentally ill mother whose baby girl dies mysteriously. Or like being bullied mercilessly…and then suddenly finding that the bullies have been mysteriously beaten, and now they stay away from you. Far away. How did that happen? This was Ian Paine’s life when he was the “fatboy.”

Fast forward a few years to Ian’s life in Manhattan, living in a spacious loft. A graphic novelist whose popular Fatboy and Priss series has earned him recognition, he hopes for some kind of love, too. But Priss won’t leave him alone, and whenever he gets close to anyone, like Megan, bad things happen.

Who is Priss? Is she a hallucination? An imaginary friend? An entity? A product of Ian’s drug fueled fantasies?

Crazy Love You: A Novel was so addictive that I could not stop reading it. The story unfolds in flashbacks, between the past and the present, and with excerpts from the graphic novel mimicking Ian’s life. I rooted for Ian, even as I wondered if he, too, suffered from some form of mental illness. In some ways, his new love Megan felt like the wrong kind of person for him. Was she his true love, or an enabler?

I started to have hopes for Ian when he finally consulted with a psychic named Eloise Montgomery. Someone who could help him sort out his experiences, figure out who or what Priss was in his life. Doubting his own perceptions, we see him spiraling out of control. What has to happen before there is a resolution? Or will there be one?

The ending left me a little stunned and wondering if I could believe my own reality, or anything I had previously thought to be true. But I loved the story and the character of Ian, despite his many flaws and self-destructive tendencies. 5.0 stars.

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