Book Review – Sh!t Bag

Hello hello, and welcome or welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet. Today I’m sharing my review of Sh!t Bag, a new release that I mentioned in my Books to Read For Disability Pride Month last month.

Synopsis
‘Come along with me on this sh!tty ride or bail out now. It’s your choice . . .’
When Freya collapses and wakes up with a temporary ileostomy bag on her stomach, her dreams of the perfect summer go down the toilet. Instead of partying in the Algarve, she’s packed off to ‘Poo Camp’ – a place for kids with bowel disease to ‘bond’.

And things can only get worse. Someone has started calling her ‘Sh!t Bag’ . . . and it’s catching on.

Freya decides to live up to the nickname, raging at her friends, her ex and the world. Only her campmate Chris seems to see past her new attitude . . .

Can Freya get her sh!t together or will she end up with just her bag by her side?

A fresh, fierce and funny story about what happens when life literally goes to sh!t.

Review
I absolutely adored this book.

I read as many books featuring disabled or chronically ill characters as I can, but there has been a gap in the market for a book that does what this one does: talks about bowel issues, without hesitation, without shying away from the gritty and grim. As someone with ongoing investigations for IBD, and having suffered since I was very young, I’ve never felt quite so seen as I did with this.

Freya hates the hand she’s been dealt, and her rage was clearly fueling her every action as she moved through the early part of the book. She’s so very angry, and doesn’t see how she can ever possibly be happy again. The friends she surprises herself in making, however, make her reassess her situation. They call her out as much as they support her, challenging her outlook as “well if you’re looking at yourself like that, how are you looking at me?” – and it makes her pause.

While she’s at a camp she didn’t want to attend, doing things that maybe secretly are okay, and meeting people that might just be okay too, her old friends from school are all tanning on the beach. She feels like she has lost everything, not just her friends and boyfriend, but her hockey place too. It’s Chris that makes her think about this again, when he tells her he’s planning on trying back out for his own school’s rugby team when term starts. She knows she needs to regain muscle and strength, but maybe, just maybe, she could give it a go….

I devoured this book in one night. It made me cry, laugh, and everything in between. As I said, I felt so very seen by this book. I got sick at sixteen, and I remember the divide, the having to plan for a wheelchair; the other teenagers that weren’t prepared to plan for that. And of course, the ones that were. Finding your people when you’re chronically ill is one of the most important things you can do, followed closely by finding your confidence, and this is a story of both. Beautiful, witty, and hitting all the right notes, this is a must read for everyone, whoever you are.

Thanks for stopping by for this review today. I’ll be back with more reviews every other day, and be sure to check out that list of books I linked to at the beginning for more disability representation.