Dasia (Forever) by Nic Stone, a middle grade novel sprinkled with letters in a verse format, provides a raw, emotional perspective of Dasia, a 13 year-old who is in the hospital receiving cancer treatment. Through Dasia's dates and timestamps, the reader is taken to her home before her treatment where she is grieving over an abusive father, missing her older brother who is serving time for a crime he didn't commit, rejected by her younger brother who is starting to hang out the same crowd that got her brother into trouble, and worst of all, cautiously walking on eggshells around her erratic mother who has undiagnosed depression and PTSD.
Dasia finds her older brother's journal and writes to him about what her life is like now that he is gone. She pours her heart into these letters and lets him in on the harsh realities she must face, aside from her cancer diagnosis. The reader is then brought back to the present when Dasia is isolated in the hospital for several weeks as she gets her treatment which leaves her weak.
One night she is visited by another patient, Jimmy, who brings out Dasia's true self. By sharing details about her own life, Dasia learns how to speak about her own struggles.
Readers will come away with a deeper understanding of adolescent emotions, thinking, and ways to help those who have similar situations as Dasia and Jimmy. There is a surprise in the story that completely caught me off guard and reaching for the tissue box. This is an important topic that deserves to be read, shared and discussed by middle grade readers, teens, and adults.
Although this is a spin-off of the Dear Martin trilogy of young adult books by Nic Stone, the reader does not have to have read those books in order to read Dasia (Forever).
It will probably encourage those readers to pick up the books in the Dear Martin series, however!
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