{"product_id":"lycanthropy-and-other-chronic-illnesses-isbn-9781683693079","title":"Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003e“\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e is a funny, heartfelt book with a phenomenal premise.”\u003ci\u003e—\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTeen Wolf\u003c\/i\u003e meets \u003ci\u003eEmergency Contact\u003c\/i\u003e in this sharply observed, hilarious, and heartwarming debut young adult novel about friendship, chronic illness, and . . . werewolves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePriya worked hard to pursue her premed dreams at Stanford, but the fallout from undiagnosed Lyme disease sends her back to her childhood home in New Jersey during her sophomore year—and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something out of character: she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the horrifying creature that's shut in the basement. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith Brigid nowhere to be found, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be a werewolf—and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid's unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.\u003cb\u003eOne of \u003ci\u003ePOPSUGAR's\u003c\/i\u003e Best YA Books of April\u003cbr\u003eKids’ Indie Next List Pick\u003cbr\u003eA SIBA Read This Next Selection for Spring 2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eA 2022-2023 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominee\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A funny, heartfelt book with a phenomenal premise . . . it manages to represent a lot of identities and intersectionalities: trans and disabled, chronically ill and racial minority, queer and cryptid. At its core, the novel feels like a love letter to the internet communities that connect people; it’s a reminder that friendships, both virtual and in-person, can save lives.”—Maya Van Waganen, \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Emotional, thoughtful, and a true testament to the power of friendship, \u003ci\u003eLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses\u003c\/i\u003e is a werewolf novel that will make you look at navigating illness, supernatural or not, in a whole new way….O’Neal breaks new ground with this book and accomplishes something truly wonderful.”—\u003ci\u003eLocus Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Your next favorite horror-comedy.”—Syfy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“O’Neal persuasively pulls from her own experience with chronic illness to inform her depiction of the topic, using interactions between support group members to layer comedic banter and vulnerability that specifically addresses aspects of disability experiences.”—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A heartwarming, quirky take on chronic illness in all its hairy detail.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A fresh and original twist on the werewolf legend.”\u003ci\u003e—Booklist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“A must-read for anyone with a chronic illness or who loves someone with a chronic illness.”\u003ci\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSchool Library Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Clever, original, entertaining, and all the more impressive when considering that \u003ci\u003eLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses\u003c\/i\u003e is author Kristen O'Neal's debut as a novelist.”—\u003ci\u003eMidwest Book Review \u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“An electric tour de force of hilarity and humanity. Oof, ouch, my heart! It bleeds for this book.”—Preston Norton, author of \u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhere I End and You Begin\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Hilarious in addition to having great chronic pain\/illness rep.”\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Horn Book Inc\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eKristen O’Neal\u003c\/b\u003e is a freelance writer who has written for sites like Buzzfeed Reader, Christianity Today, Birth.Movies.Death, LitHub, and Electric Literature. She lives on the internet. You can find her at kristenoneal on Tumblr. \u003ci\u003eLycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses\u003c\/i\u003e is her first novel.Ticks don’t actually have teeth. I looked it up afterward, scrolling through photos with that same kind of sick fascination of watching someone pop a pimple. They’ve got this horrible ridged capitulum that opens up into three parts like the monster from \u003ci\u003eStranger Things\u003c\/i\u003e, sinks into your skin, and holds on just long enough to derail the course of your entire life.\u003cbr\u003e     I don’t know what time it is when I wake up. This time last year, I would have known the second I heard my alarm trilling: 7:30 a.m. on a Monday, enough time to hit snooze once, slip out of bed, turn on the coffee pot my roommate and I weren’t allowed to have in our dorm, and get ready to leave for Bio at 8:40. Enough time to sit and drink it, knees to my chest, as she slept, scrolling through my email or my blog. I was a well-oiled machine. I was pre-med at Stanford and I had made it out of New Jersey. I was ready for anything.\u003cbr\u003e     It must have happened when I was home for the summer, trudging through the tall grass with my high school friends, cutting across a field to get to town. Or maybe it was down by the Amtrak tracks with the climbing plants as Jadie roped me into “acting” for one of her film projects. I don’t know. I’ll never know. The only thing I know is that when I got back to California last fall, I got sick. Really sick.\u003cbr\u003e     I don’t set an alarm anymore. I know I’ve slept too long—my internal clock won’t wake me when it’s supposed to. It’s sluggish now, constantly running low on battery, and so am I.\u003cbr\u003e     I take a quick inventory, staring up at the same crack in my ceiling that I’ve stared up at since I was five years old. My head is stuffed with cotton. I feel heavy, like something is pinning me to the mattress. And my joints hurt, a throbbing pain that will only get worse as I move. It feels like a handful of fevers scattered around my body, a dozen hungry black-hole stomachs—my left knuckles, my ankle, my knee, my hips, my wrist.\u003cbr\u003e     Sometimes it feels like coals being stoked hotter and hotter until I can’t move. Sometimes it feels like a fist clenched tight, tight, tight, until I think that my bones are going to break. Sometimes it feels like each segment of my body is floating away from the others like Pangea, a strange, electric humming that separates all of my bones.\u003cbr\u003e     Sometimes it doesn’t feel like anything at all. Sometimes it just hurts.\u003cbr\u003e     Today will be okay, probably. But when the weather’s about to change, I can roll over and feel every point where my bones connect to each other. Last week I landed wrong when I walked down the steps to the car, and my swollen knee remembers this as well as I do.\u003cbr\u003e     I hear my door creak open before it’s pulled shut again with a soft \u003ci\u003eclick\u003c\/i\u003e. I don’t make a sound.\u003cbr\u003e     “Let me just check if she needs anything,” comes my mom’s voice. She doesn’t know how to whisper, so her version of a hushed tone cuts right through the door. “She hasn’t been to church with us in so long.”\u003cbr\u003e     My dad replies in Tamil, mostly. “Let the girl sleep. She needs to rest. You talked with the doctor yourself, didn’t you?”\u003cbr\u003e     “And what does he know?” I can\u003ci\u003e see \u003c\/i\u003emy mom waving her hand. Then, a little louder: “Priya—”\u003cbr\u003e     My dad shushes her. “You are shouting—”\u003cbr\u003e     “I am \u003ci\u003enot \u003c\/i\u003eshouting, you are—”\u003cbr\u003e     “I’ll stay back in case she needs me. Okay?”\u003cbr\u003e     There’s a pause. Then, my dad’s voice again: “She’s going to be just fine.”\u003cbr\u003e     My mom’s: “We should be going to church as a family.”\u003cbr\u003e     “We will, I promise.”\u003cbr\u003e     “Okay.”\u003cbr\u003e     The door opens again, and I let my eyes close. I hear my mom pad over to my bed, sit on the side. She smooths back my hair and kisses me on the forehead, gentler than she usually is with me. I think about pretending I’m still asleep, but a soft-edged affection tugs at my heart and I pretend, instead, that she’s woken me up.\u003cbr\u003e     “How are you feeling?” she asks.\u003cbr\u003e     “Pretty good,” I lie. It’s worth it for the grin that makes its way across her face, and she pats me on the cheek.\u003cbr\u003e     “Don’t tell your father I woke you up,” she says. “He’ll get mad at me.”\u003cbr\u003e     I smile back at her. “Have fun at church.”\u003cbr\u003e     “I always put you in the prayer requests,” she says. I know it’s meant to be comforting, but the thought of everyone talking about me and my illness makes me want to stay in the house forever and never show my face in public again.\u003cbr\u003e     “Say hello to God for me,” I joke. Her face turns severe.\u003cbr\u003e     “Say hello yourself!” she says. “You’re being silly. Okay, go back to sleep. Don’t tell your father.”\u003cbr\u003e     “I won’t.”\u003cbr\u003e     I mean to wake up then, to pull open my closet and put on something other than sweatpants. I mean to go downstairs and eat breakfast with my dad, or maybe even flag down my mom and brother and sister, tell them I’m coming to church with them after all. But instead my eyes close, and I’m pulled back under before I even reach over and click the Tumblr app on my phone.","brand":"Quirk Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304408797413,"sku":"NP9781683693079","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781683693079.jpg?v=1767731994","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/lycanthropy-and-other-chronic-illnesses-isbn-9781683693079","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}