An engaging YA novel about a girl in treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder that combats the dehumanizing stigma around mental illness

Sixteen-year-old Mira Durand has just been checked into the secure unit of the Residency Adolescent Treatment Centre for obsessive compulsive and comorbid disorders. Four years of being passed around different psych wards like a hot potato have only worsened her OCD and anorexia. Her brutal, religious compulsions, which she believes keep her mom safe, make her less of a clean freak and more of a freak freak. No wonder her only friend is her journal.

At the Residency's Ward 2, Mira discovers that her shrink is a fellow fantasy nerd and that her wardmates have enough of their own high-risk behaviours to tolerate hers. The complex friendships she forms with them (including a first love), the slow trust she builds with her treatment team, and the outside and family visits she earns give her things to look forward to beyond the drudgery of her compulsions. But it takes visiting Gung Gung, her dying maternal grandfather, for her to realize that to truly live, she must fight the cognitive distortions at the heart of her compulsions.

Based on the author's personal experience, A Drop in the Ocean is a gritty, humanizing portrait of living with mental illness.

Lea Taranto is a disabled Chinese Jewish Canadian writer who lives with OCD and comorbid disorders. An MFA graduate of the University of British Columbia, alumnus of Simon Fraser University Writer's Studio, and member of PRISM International's poetry board, she resides on traditional, unceded Halkomelem and Squamish territories in BC.

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A Drop in the Ocean is both heartbreaking in its raw, honest depictions of the protagonist Mira's struggles with her compulsions and inspiring in how the imperfect but beautiful relationships Mira forms, along with her own creativity, help her to grow through these struggles. Taranto doesn't shy away from the hard, ugly side of mental illness, but she holds her characters with tenderness and respect, too. -Tanya Boteju, author of Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens and Bruised

A brave, beautiful novel that will speak to teens everywhere who struggle with mental health challenges. Mira is a compelling character, privy to a darkness that adults don't always see but so many teens will immediately recognize. She's also creative, romantic, funny, and kind, the literary BFF you never knew you were waiting for. This book is a gem. -Annabel Lyon, author of Consent

Lea Taranto is a bright new spark on the YA scene. -Susin Nielsen, author of No Fixed Address

At the heart of this book is a vivid and bracing honesty about mental illness, our desire to be seen, and the constant struggle to navigate our own path. Through Mira we experience life's unexpected beauty and difficult truths - we see, we hear, we feel, and we root for her at every page turn. A mesmerizing debut. -Nancy Lee, author of Dead Girls and The Age

Mira's story is a coming-of-age journey told through a harrowing labyrinth of mental illness, institutionalization, and plain-old hormonal adolescence in a manner that reveals a heroine who is incredibly kind, loving, fantastically romantic, and unavoidably angsty, just like the novel's author, Lea Taranto. Able to draw deeply upon her own life experience, Taranto is a new voice to watch out for. I can't wait to see what she writes next. -JJ Lee, author of The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit