3 stars
If you’ve never read a book by Robyn Schneider, you’re in for a treat — “Extraordinary Means” is a quirky read that I really do recommend. Don’t be turned off by my three-star rating, because “Extraordinary Means” was a five-star book for me... Until the last 25 pages or so.
Is it right that the ending of a book could be the sole reason I docked Schneider’s second novel two whole stars? I don’t care. It meant that much to me.
Let’s start with the premise of “Extraordinary Means” — Lane is a boy who has never really lived, only prepared himself through high school for the life he’d eventually have; Sadie was always too afraid to live and be herself, until she got to Latham House. Latham House is a tuberculosis sanatorium where teenagers diagnosed with a (fictional) drug-resistant strain of TB could come for treatment and education, to keep the public out of harm.
It is one of the most fascinatingly simple alternate futures I’ve stumbled upon in a young adult novel — a disease that’s been around for many years suddenly can’t be treated anymore. Hundreds are infected. Many are contagious. Fear is spreading. What do we do?
In comes Latham House, and there’s Lane and Sadie — two teens with tuberculosis, who met a long time ago at summer camp, and are reunited when their disease brings them together. Of course they fall in love. Of course they do.
But it’s sweet. It’s genuine. I spent a good chunk of the book waiting for it to happen, and when it does, I smiled.
The secondary characters — the teacher who lost his gumption to teach once he realized how sick many of his students were, fan fiction-writing Marina, song-writing Charlie and Latham’s prayer group members, just to name a few standouts — made the world even more full. They feel possibility for the world we live in, and it feels so real. You don’t doubt anything Schneider writes to be anything but true.
The writing is quirky and fun, quick and clever. It’s not a quick read, but it's one of those you can't help but finish in one night.
I don't want to spoil the end for potential other readers, so I won’t blatantly announce what happens. But let me give you this warning: You spend the book convincing yourself that it isn’t going to happen, and it does. And convincing myself of that only to read what I was really hoping I wouldn’t read ruined the end for me.
The fate of the characters is one thing (I was, after all, deeply invested in the future of everyone after they left Latham) and I didn’t expect a completely happy ending — but I was hoping for an ending that wasn’t what you’d expect from a young adult novel about tuberculosis. It didn’t deliver.
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