Think this book was just trying to do a bit too much - it would've been enough I think just to have the two girls going through their separate issues rather than the whole escape plot too.

Beautiful alternative coming of age story.


Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me access an ARC of this book in exchange for my feedback.

Unfortunately I no longer wish to review this book as the first few chapters did not reel me in. Thank you for the opportunity.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I loved it, and it definitely wasn’t a favourite, but I did enjoy it. The premise was really interesting, it’s pretty different from books I’ve read in the past, so I was intrigued to read it and see where it went. I enjoyed reading and Rosa’s life and her recovery, however I might have like to see more about her life with the terminal nerve disorder. I think that representation is important so I would have like to see her ill/disabled and not just focus on her as able-bodied and in recovery.
The book definitely made me consider a lot of life, and death and faith. It poses a lot of questions for the reader to think about, especially in terms of ethical concerns about the surgery, and the debate of what happens to the souls of patients. I found it interesting to stop and think and make my own decisions whilst also reading from the point of view of the characters within this story.
It’s a deep and dark plot, about illness and contemplation of faith, but I think it was well written so it didn’t feel look heavy reading it. The tone and writing style were fairly light which made it a lot easier to read, which was good. On the other hand, sometimes I found the writing to be a bit simplistic. Whilst I enjoyed it not being too dark, and liked being able to read it quickly, I would have preferred a bit more description in some parts.
I also enjoyed the characters, not just the main characters, but I think the secondary characters, such as her brother Elliot, where really well developed. They weren’t necessarily always perfect or likeable, but sometimes secondary characters are forgotten about a bit and underdeveloped, but I didn’t find that here!
Overall, I enjoyed it a lot, but I would have liked perhaps a bit more of a focus on her life with the illness, as that was a bit part of the synopsis but it focused on very little. Other than that, it was a quick, easy read that definitely made me think.

Such an interesting idea, a really gripping premise, but I struggled with the characterisation in this book. It just didn't quite work for me and I found it a bit slow. It was less contemporary than I first though, with the brain/body transplant more of a sci-fi idea.

I first heard about this book at the Stripes event in Jan 2017. I enjoyed it a lot, the ideas the book portrayed were fascinating and clearly well-researched. It just fell a bit flat with pacing, I started to get a bit bored at the end. Also I think the characters would have had a lot more to deal with than they did, emotionally.

She, Myself and I is one of the books that you just have to love. The plot was the deciding factor that drew me in and I kept on reading whenever I had time to spare. The overall theme of the book can be thought of as intense, but in the end it is full of feelings and you can't not sympathise with Rosa.

She, Myself and I follows Rosa, the world's first success story of a brain transplant and how she adjusts to living in someone else's body.
I have mixed feelings about this book.
Firstly, I think Emma Young has done an amazing job at capturing the rollercoaster of emotions that someone may be feeling after an operation of that magnitude. I loved Rosa's inner turmoil of wanting to be grateful for her new body but also her guilt for the young girl whose life was lost.
I loved the characters in this story, especially Rosa's brother. His sarcasm and light-heartedness gave humour exactly where it was needed yet he still managed to be thoughtful and serious when it was needed, in the end being the rock Rosa needed. I thought Joe was a great companion for Rosa and enjoyed finding out more about his past as I read on.
The only negative I had is that I felt the story was slow in places. It took me a while to get through it and it wasn't until the later chapters that I was desperate to keep reading. I will also mention that Rosa, being a girl who has lived her life with a disease, is extremely self-conscious and insecure which I found irritating at times however that is just personal preference as I find people like that in real life quite irritating too!
In all, this is a great read and I would recommend to a friend.

This book requires the reader to suspend their disbelief to get on board with the concept, which was very easily done as the plot established itself quite credibly. Although I enjoyed the book, it didn't hold my attention very well which made for a very slow reading experience. I really enjoyed all of the characters in this book, particularly Elliott and Rosa, but there was a slight insta-love factor with Rosa and Joe that bothered me slightly, though their relationship was quite sweet. Overall, a fun book but not much more for me.

DNF at 29%. The book had an interesting concept but i didn't like the writing style and i didn't care for the characters

This was an interesting take on identity and what ifs. The story was well-written and drew me in and I loved the concept. Everything was really well researched and while not possible at the moment everything seemed plausible.

I really liked the characters, Rosa in particular was interesting in her lack of identity and introspection, she's intriguing in the nature/nurture context as well, how much does memory and experience shape us? I also loved Elliot's musings, particularly near the end.

Joe was nice but going across country when you've only known someone for a couple of days was not a sensible idea or one to be encouraged. The whole plotline around Joe and the instalove with him was the main reason stars were dropped.

I felt like the scene with Althea was too brief after so much build-up, I think that more could have been done there. Also a small niggle but Rosa's internet friend in Japan seemed a useless plot-point. Why mention lying to your internet friend if nothing is going to happen, I expected a scene later with Rosa coming clean about everything, especially as it's implied she's going to leak the truth anyway.

3/5 stars

This is a really good read. Rosa is slowly dying from a nerve disease and is given the chance of a new body. This story raises so many questions. If this was real life, how accepting would people be? How would you feel being in somebody elses body? This is an interesting, thought provoking story.

I really liked the sound of this book but sadly for me it didn’t really deliver. It was a very clever idea and well written, it just left me a but meh. Some bits were really good and I especially loved her relationship with her brother. It just didn’t seem to get anywhere. Sorry!

We spend our whole lives unintentionally committing ourselves to memory. We study the curve of our bodies, the shape of our faces, the dimple in our cheeks. that slightly crooked tooth or the moles we have dotted about our skin. We like some of them, so much so we probably wouldn’t give them up lightly, but others we might swap gladly. But whether we like what we see, or not, the person we see looking back at us in the mirror is who “me” is. So imagine, and really genuinely try to imagine, that the next time you look into that same mirror it’s like looking across a sink in a bathroom at a stranger washing their hands across from you. You don’t know the way their hair flops to one side all the time which gets on their nerves, you don’t know about that scar on their knee from when they fell off their bikes and you definitely don’t know what makes them “them”. Would you want to? Would you trade places? Would you still be “me” if your brain was in their body?

That’s pretty much Rosa’s dilemma now. Because after suffering from the age of seven from symptoms of a seriously damaging and debilitating nerve disease, Rosa has been selected for a breakthrough surgery which sees her brain being put into the head of another girls body. Sylvia.

The author of this book has so artfully handled some really mind blowing questions, largely about our identities to ourselves but also about how people identify us, or with us. There is so much more to us than the body we carry ourselves in.

I loved Rosa, her voice was the perfect blend of sarcasm, vulnerability and fight that I just love to read about. Her journey is pretty weird - I mean she’s going to find out about the dead girl whose body she’s so fortunate to live in (mind blowing again!). But the thought processes, questions and possibilities of such a thing are what makes this book so brilliant.

This is a book about identity.. But it is also so much more than that. An easy book to recommend.

Thank you Netgalley for the amazing ARC.

Originally I was skeptical of the premise as I am not a big fan of medically based novels but honestly I loved this.

I loved the fact that it not only incorporated what it would be like for the recipient but also for the parents and the donor family and friends.

I also enjoyed Joe - as a journalist myself - I found what he was doing fun and exciting and different. A major part that I enjoyed that while there was an undertone of romance there wasn't a big deal over it and it just happened slowly over the course of the novel rather than just happening straight away.
Seeing the development of Rosa as a character was amazing to see and I felt that I was able to develop along with her.

I loved the writing - clear and concise it didn't spin off into long monologues or have pages and pages of dialogue. It made it clear what was being wrote about, with Emma Young even using it to help explain some of the more difficult and harder to understand medical jargon.

The reason that I never made it five stars is due to the fact that I felt there could have been a little bit more background about how the disease came around and also some more information on the family of Rosa - I would have liked to know more about Elliot in particular.

Would definitely recommend.

I received a copy of this book from netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Slight spoilers ahead, nothing too major but if you haven’t finished the book yet, please don’t read incase.
Rosa is a teenage quadriplegic with a degenerative disease. Both she and her parents see a trial treatment as the only chance for Rosa to survive, nevermind have a life where she isn’t constantly depending on her parents. The treatment she receives is a brain transplant into the body of another teenage girl, Sylvia, who was involved in an accident which left her brain dead.
Overall, I enjoyed the story. There was the typical instalove which you just can’t seem to get away from in YA books these days, both with with secrets they were hiding from each other. The road trip which, less common, but always for self discovery in a way. The fall out of said road trip, arguments with family and the drama this causes for the couple.
At first I really enjoyed the character of Rosa, but from the second she left the hospital for the weekend with Joe she became more and more annoying to me. After going through life thinking that you would never walk again or be able to perform simple tasks, I can understand the urge to go and do something reckless, something you never thought you could do, but everything she did on the trip really annoyed me. She shows up randomly in a small town wearing a dead girls face and flat out lies to the friends of said dead girl. The lie she told about being the long lost adopted twin coming back to learn about her sister is just horrible. Not only does this lie hurt Sylvia’s best friend when she is told this, what this lie could do to her family is unimaginable. Especially after learning about Sylvia’s mothers medical issues so soon after her death. What this would have done to Daniel if it had been spread around town is horrible to think about.
Joes story interested me more, the story about his mum was bittersweet, after seeing close family members suffering from terminal illnesses myself I can totally understand his thought process.
Overall, I enjoyed the book for the most part, but more so for Joe than for Rosa.
2.5/5 stars

This review appears on Goodreads, and will be cross-posted to my blog.

I actually enjoyed this a lot. More than I expected to, for some reason, although I'm not sure why my expectations were so low -- possibly because I don't read a huge amount of contemporary? Although this isn't exactly straightforward contemporary. Modern medicine isn't quite at the stage of brain transplants, although we're getting closer every day, so I guess there's a slightly speculative aspect to this.

Anyway, this is about a girl with a degenerative nerve disease whose brain is transplanted into the body of a coma patient. It explores some pretty big themes, as you can imagine: what are you prepared to do to stay alive? What makes you <i>you</i>, and can you still be yourself when you look completely different? How do you know if people like you for yourself or for the body you happen to be wearing?

And, of course, once you bring theology into the question it becomes more complicated. Is it ethical to perform an operation like this, and what happens to the souls of both patients?

You can imagine, then, that the book is quite heavy. But it's actually not. It manages to keep the tone relatively light, and while I'm not exactly the best judge of books that talk about dying (look. I exist in a permanent state of terror about mortality and am very easily triggered into yet another existential crisis, I handle the thought of death very badly), I never felt like it went too dark.

I also really, really loved Rosa's brother Elliot. He's irreverent, sometimes inappropriate, and not afraid to say things like they are -- but he's also amazing. He cares so much. He manages to be unexpectedly philosophical. He knows how to make Rosa feel better when nobody else can. And he's just super awesome. Like, I'm a sucker for great sibling relationships, and this one in particular got to me.

I have to admit, I didn't really understand Rosa's decision to go off on a road trip with Joe, an aspiring journalist she meets in the park outside the hospital. I get that she needs answers about the girl whose body she now has; anyone would. But running away from hospital just seems like a ridiculous idea when you've had major surgery, especially with someone you barely know. I mean, come on, if you're going to go on a road trip, do it with your awesome brother!

(There was also romance with Joe, and I didn't object to it as much as I thought I might, mostly because it did serve to underline the broader questions of identity and what it means to have someone else's body, but it might have worked just as well without.)

I enjoyed the writing style, though I'm not sure there was particularly anything unusual about it. It just managed not to annoy me, and I've read too many books with an annoying writing style lately, so I guess I'm more easily pleased than sometimes.

I've seen a few reviews were people have suggested that perhaps the central conceit of the novel is ableist: was Rosa's life not worth living because she was paralysed? Isn't it inherently problematic to say she needs a 'healthy' body to live her best life? I have to admit, I didn't think about that while reading. But that's mostly because it seemed to me that her disease was literally killing her, and that this was a last resort to avoid certain death that would otherwise occur before too long. I'm not paralysed in any way, and I can't speak for the representation on that front, though I feel slightly bad that it didn't occur to me to consider it earlier, but I didn't read it as 'disabled person has to become abled to be happy' -- I read it as 'dying person does what's necessary to Not Die', which is quite a different story.

On the whole, though, I found it enjoyable, and compulsive, and a distraction from all the things I was supposed to be reading for uni. It was probably a 3.5* read, but I'm going to be nice and round up.

Rosa is the first person in the world to receive a whole body donation. Her own body was failing and her brain was transplanted into someone elses. The concept of the book is really interesting but it isn't particularly well executed. The beginning of the book is really gripping but it starts to lag about halfway through which is quite disappointing.

After reading the blurb of 'She, Myself and I' by Emma Young, I was immediately interested.

18 year old Londoner, Rosa suffers from a terminal nerve disease. She uses a voice activated wheelchair and has been told that she will not survive for long. 18 year old Sylvia Johnson, is in a coma in a hospital in Boston. Declared brain dead, her parents make the heart wrenching decision to switch off her life support machine and donate her body to a new experiment that will see the first ever brain transplant.

This is, in my opinion, a fascinating idea for a story, just because it's amazing to me that we are at the scientific stage of actually being able to make it a reality. Despite this, there's quite a bit of controversy flying around in the reviews for this book about whether there should have been more reference to the scientific procedure and whether the writer has suggested that a disabled life isn't one worth living. Obviously, this isn't the case and I don't think the writer, in any way, suggested that this is an option for anyone facing or living in the same way as Rosa. Having said this, I am incredibly fortunate and I am able-bodied so I read this novel from that perspective.

The opening chapters I thought were brilliant, I was immediately hooked and felt all the angst, anxiety and worry that Rosa felt before her surgery. Having said that, there is, granted, a very quick transition from the surgery to Rosa being back on her feet and being able to sprint down a Louisiana street.

It raised some huge issues: who actually are we? Does our body make us, us? Can you transfer a soul to another body just by moving the brain? Does your outward appearance define who you are? Is it right for humans to play God? These are all questions that I'm fascinated with anyway, but I thought it was a clever to tackle these in a YA novel.

The only thing that really disappointed me about this book was the romance element. I'm guessing here, but if you had just had major surgery, surgery that had never been conducted before and had meant that you were essentially learning to speak, walk, move, think in a world that you had been locked out of during your recovery from the surgery, which is months, I think the last thing you'd encounter would be a love interest. For me, this cheapened the story and it slipped too much into a generic, teenage love story that it kinda put me off continuing to read the book. It just seemed so typical that the boy of her dreams just happens to be conveniently sat in the hospital park and he immediately want to talk to her. I hate that forced convention of romance at the best of times and it was so unnecessary here. I'm glad I did continue to read because Young pulls it back towards the end and begins to raise some more interesting questions about how you would move forward and conduct life after that experience. I'm just disappointed the romance was introduced in the first place, because, to be honest, it really cheapened Rosa's experience and character for me.

I think in some cases you can run a romance alongside another major plot line, but here I don't think it works. What does work though, is Rosa's internal voice, the relationship with her brother, her family, her new body and the doctors and nurses around her. There was a lot here that I thoroughly enjoyed, just a part of me thinks that you could have done a little more with such a great idea.

One thing that I'm guessing won't be an issue for the later editions, was that in my copy, the formatting of the text was so confusing. Some dialogue was all one line making it difficult to determine who was speaking and to who, and sentences were split onto different lines marking it hard to follow the text. It was quite distracting from the story and I've not experienced it in any other ARC copy I have read on my kindle.

A big thank you to Netgalley, Emma Young and Stripes Publishing for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I don't know what it is about stories that include brain transplants that I love so much. Maybe it's the science element? Maybe it's how easy it is to add in that case of confused identity trope that I adore so much? Or maybe it's just the fact that brain transplants are incredibly weird, and this book touched on that perfectly?

She, Myself and I follows the story of Rosa, a quadriplegic girl from London who wants a second chance at life. Incredibly, a girl with the opposite problem is found, all the way over in the USA, whose body is fundamentally unharmed, but whose mind is gone. So, the improbable happens, and Rosa's brain and consciousness are placed into that of this unknown American girl. But suddenly being seen as someone who is not you, and being given the opportunity to live a full life in someone else's body, has consequences.

The main plot of this story is Rosa's struggle to come to terms with her new life, inside someone else's body. Suddenly, she's immediately seen to be someone completely different to herself, and the journey she goes on to learn more about the dead girl, and her friends and family, is completely justified in such a context, and really well handled.

I've read a lot of criticism about this story for it being "ableist", in that it suggests that Rosa would have had no opportunities in her condition. I don't see this as a massive issue myself, as it was a really small part of the plot, and I think it's a justified statement, because, as an eighteen-year-old in a body that doesn't function, she wouldn't have had many opportunities. I do understand why some people might see it as problematic, but it didn't bother me, personally, and definitely didn't detract from my love of the story.

It was a really quick, enjoyable read, and one I know I'll continue to love. It actually reminded me a lot of Airhead by Meg Cabot, a book I read when I was much younger, so it was nostalgic for me, too.

I have this a full five, deserved stars.