Neal Shusterman

Challenger Deep

National Book Award and Golden Kite Award Winner 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."

Lucia

indri

i.. honestly don’t know where to start. this book is just.. hands down one of the most wonderful books i’ve read in a while. it’s so great that it actually made me hope i had found the book sooner.

i took my time reading this, not only because at first it was a bit confusing due to the two different stories kind of going on at the same time, but also because i feel like every words written forced me to carefully look into it and understand the real meaning of what the author (or Caden!) is trying to say. 

one of my favorite quotes:

“We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn’t mean we really know what’s in the box. 

It’s kind of like religion. It gives us comfort to believe we have defined something that is, by its very nature, indefinable. As to whether or not we’ve gotten it right, well, it’s all a matter of faith.”

Apiecalypse Jen

Gillian Rose

3.5 stars

A tough read because it deals with mental illness. The artwork was pretty interesting.

Maria Flowers

I read this in one sitting.

An exquisite look at a not so happy tale, Challenger Deep takes you deeper in the mind of an ill boy through two varied narrations, which sometimes overlap. While it is obvious it was geared toward a younger audience, the content is anything but, perplexing and drugging the reader with far too real scenarios and a fiction-like tale. I recommend this to anyone interested in the life of a mentally ill, or someone who goes through similar issues.

jess

"Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids are hidden under the rug."

This is a really good book - and I understand that it was with the help of Shusterman's son, who suffers from the same illness that Caden Bosch does, so I'm going to assume that many things are correct about the nuances of his illness. It was heartbreaking to see him spiral down. I thought thy it was incredibly well-written. Good prose, and the shift to second person worked effectively. The characters were all believable and it wasn't hard to figure out how the ship scenes translated to real-life. I like how all the characters are realistic, and how it's not a love story, and how Caden doesn't get better BAM right after being released. (Looking at you, It's Kind of a Funny Story.) Beautiful metaphors and motifs and themes. 

It's nice to see a book about mental illness that isn't about depression or anxiety, which the overwhelming majority are. It's also nice to see a book about mental illness without obvious trauma to set the ball rolling. Both are common, but there are kids dealing with psychosis and delusion - what Caden deals with - and they need the same kind of representation in books that kids with "milder" mental illness. And kids who don't have obvious trauma need that representation too. I really liked this book.

While I did find the book a bit slow and perplexing in the beginning, as I dove further into the pages I found myself more and more apart of Caden's mind and story. I thought it was captivating how Shusterman wrote the book splitting it between Caden's reality and non-reality because it really captured his slow descent into psychosis. Shusterman shines a light on mental illness and how it is not simply cured by medication like physical illnesses and that it is a more challenging and deeper issue to battle. I really enjoyed the openendedness of the final pages and how it reveals that mental illness is never completely cured and is a lifelong struggle. Shusterman provided a way for readers to be apart of the narrator and live his life right alongside him.

Lukas Ellerbrook

What an absolutely beautiful novel. I had a lot of hopes and this book met every single one of them. Schizophrenia is a very underrepresented mental illness in media and often times, is portrayed as very violent and dangerous, when in fact it's rarely that and it's so great to see it portrayed positively.

This is a book that I would easily recommend to someone who was wanting to read fiction featuring a character with schizophrenia. The author does such a great telling on this mental illness, and I think the drawings inside the book really aided in this storytelling.

Alexa Jade

Franzi

Don't get me wrong - I love Neal Shusterman and I am a huge fan of his books. So I had high expectations for this one. I was so excited when I read that this book is about schizophrenia. His writing style is once again very convincing, and those who know and love Neal Shusterman's books have probably also fallen in love with the profundity of his writing. Sadly, that is the only plus point I can give. I just expected more. I don't know exactly WHAT I was expecting, to be honest, but the pirate ship journey was not it, unfortunately. Nevertheless, I am very sure that the picture of schizophrenia was very well portrayed. What can I say? I wanted to love it but I couldn't, sorry.

Emily Ruth Carter

It was more a 3.5 for me. This is why I hate rating books. I didn't LOVE it, but was pleased it exists.

Jennifer

I have read Neal Shusterman's Arc of Scythe series but reading Challenger Deep is nevertheless a completely new experience as I have never read his books outside of the Sci-Fi genre. Challenger Deep is a heartwrenching tale about mental illnesses: both the firsthand experience and the challenges living with it. I found Caden's authentic narrative engaging and page turning. I really liked the way his narratives fit with the illustrations and also the figurative languages used to describe the struggles he experienced (e.g. the deep sea imageries). 

On the flipside, I initially found the story to be difficult to follow through as Caden's narratives shifts between what goes on inside his head (the adventures at the sea) and what happens in the present. This is mostly due to the length of each chapter, most of them between 1 ~ 3 pages long. So it took me time to be completely engaged in the book.

Despite my concerns with the chapter length, Neil Shusterman's Challenger Deep is a beautifully written book about living with mental illnesses. It's emotionally touching, heartbreaking, but also a tad hopeful. It's one of the few books about this experience which felt authentic to read about.

N.B. This book contains following content warnings: suicide, mental illnesses, and medical stuff


(3.5 stars out of 5)

Mayra Melo

This is a masterpiece. 
And everyone should read it.

P.S.: The cannon-cleaning metaphor gave me chills. Literally.

Maxime van der Wal

This is in between 4 and 5 stars - I can’t really decide.

Although this was my second time reading it, I was amazed by the rawness of both the story and Shusterman’s prose. If anything, I think I was able to appreciate it more.  Challenger Deep , like the title suggests, goes deep. It is unforgiving in its honesty. It is ugly, but hopeful at the same time. I loved the confusing aspect of it, and I particularly enjoyed to guess what Caden’s hallucinations represented in reality. Reality and delusion were also woven into each other superbly nearing the end of the book. Though I do not suffer from schizophrenia myself, the portrayal of feeling so deeply lost was well-done and relatable. I am also glad this was based on real life experiences (Shusterman’s son), and mental illness wasn’t glorified in any shape or form. My only complaint would be that the ending could’ve been better as it felt a bit rushed. 

Overall,  Challenger Deep  is such an important novel, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to read an accurate - and also incredibly fascinating - book about mental illness and hospitalisation.

Ruth Parker 

Neal Schusterman is one of my favourite new authors last year, discovered through Gabbyreads booktube where she read Scythe. I read the first, immediately ordered the second book straight after and then preordered the final book, waiting by my door until it was released. Just loved it. 

This book wasn’t like that. It had some of the same lovely lyrical prose at times that makes you think. But the whole topic was different. This book is based around mental health, an important topic which is done correctly can be such a positive influence on the community. 

This book wasn’t done wrong; in fact I think it’s clear that the author has done his research and at the back of the book it tells us that his son has lived with mental illness. For me as a reader that makes this book more believable and more special. 

The problem for me was that this book just didn’t speak to me. It wasn’t for me. It was well written, an amazing premise, but i just didn’t connect. 

I will always read more from this author and would recommend this book, even if it wasn’t my favourite.

Barbara Rosas

Mental illness is not easy to depict and as it is expressed in the book, it is different for each person. But this book represented in such an honest way what is it like. Taking the drawings and experiences of close ones, Shusterman made a profound and beautiful book. It took me in a journey to the deepest of a mental illness and I could see a lot of my own experiences reflected in it. The halluciantions can be seen as a reflection of the "real" world, but I think it is also important to not look into how each detail reflects on the most normal reality, but to really experience the sea and the boat as a reality in itself. To Caden, the boat was as real as the fact that the sun rises every morning and I think the book was aiming for the reader to do the same, to let it be real, because when you suffer from mental illness things that are untrue become a fact to you. 
I loved how honest this book was, even though the truth was not something happy. In a way, it shows you the worse of mental illness and makes you see the beauty of recovery, with a final message that again, was honest and terrible but also full of hope and strength.

Patrick Arminio

This is an amazing book, I never had idea how a mentally ill person would feel, this books does explain in a nice and addictive way.

Challenger Deep

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