Optimists Die First
Age 12+
Personal & Social Issues: Family Issues
Award-winning author Susin Nielsen's brilliant new novel explores heartbreak and tragedy in the way only she can - with a big dose of humour, sarcasm ... and lots of cats.
Petula's pessimistic world is turned upside down when she meets Jacob, an optimist with a long-hidden secret.
Petula has avoided friendship and happiness ever since tragedy struck her family and took her beloved younger sister Maxine. Worse, Petula blames herself. If only she'd kept an eye on her sister, if only she'd sewn the button Maxine choked on better, if only...
Now her anxiety is getting out of control, she is forced to attend the world’s most hopeless art therapy class. But one day, in walks the Bionic Man: a charming, amazingly tall newcomer called Jacob, who is also an amputee. Petula's ready to freeze him out, just like she did with her former best friend, but when she’s paired with Jacob for a class project, there’s no denying they have brilliant ideas together – ideas like remaking Wuthering Heights with cats.
But Petula and Jacob each have desperately painful secrets in their pasts – and when the truth comes out, there’s no way Petula is ready for it.
Creators
Susin Nielsen got her start writing for popular television series, Degrassi Junior High. Since then, she’s written for many Canadian TV shows and her young adult novels have received considerable critical acclaim. Word Nerd and My Messed-Up Life won multiple Young Readers’ Choice Awards. The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen won the UKLA Award, the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award, the Canadian Library Association’s Children’s Book of the Year and many Young Readers’ Choice Awards, while We Are All Made of Molecules was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. Susin lives in Vancouver with her family and two extremely destructive cats.
Reviews
Hilarious, heart-warming and beautifully unexpected – a real keeper
I fell for Optimists Die First like I was curled up with a familiar favourite – offbeat charm, with a bittersweet romance at its sorrowful heart.
Optimists Die First will make you feel bigger in every way. Bigger in courage to face a dangerous world; bigger in feeling; bigger in love; bigger in your ability to put yourself back together after something that should break you; and yes, bigger in optimism
Susin Nielsen has produced a richly comic story featuring a cast of mismatched, engaging characters
The Guardian, The Best New Children's Books supplement
Grief and guilt permeate Nielsen’s empathic and deeply moving story, balanced by sharply funny narration and dialogue.
Publishers Weekly
