Reviewed by Danelle Petersen for Readers' Favorite

At 14, Lina Daniels feels like her life is starting to crash and burn at rapid speed. Tasks that were once easy to do become impossible to complete; one minute she's on a high, the next, she's having a full-blown meltdown. And soon, Lina's education starts taking a drastic downward dive. Worse still, her erratic behavior is starting to affect the family. Everyone is convinced Lina's just looking for attention. But what they all fail to realize is that Lina suffers from Borderline Personality Disorder; a disorder that not only cripples the mind but devastates the life of both the sufferer and his/her loved ones. By writing Emo Reality, Jerold, Lina's father, hopes to draw more attention to the disorder and the havoc it can wreak if not diagnosed at an early age. Jerold hopes to prevent this from becoming someone else's reality.

Jerold writes Emo Reality from Lina's perspective which gives us a clear view of what Lina's thoughts were at the time of her mental crisis. Her thoughts were that of an aggressive and dangerous person and at times I felt frustrated that no one could see that she was in pain and help her the way she needed to be helped. The last chapter is insightful and succeeds in what it had hoped to do: to help others gain insightful knowledge concerning Borderline Personality Disorder and how to properly deal with it. Through Lina, Jerold takes us on a heartfelt journey of what can happen when mental disorders go untreated and what the outcome is. Emo Reality is a beautiful memoir filled with a father's love and his refusal to give up on his daughter.