The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

Jade DeLuna seems like a normal girl on the outside: she spends time with her friends, has a full load of AP classes, likes learning about animals. But what most people don't know is that she gets panic attacks, moments of pure terror that cause her to lose her breath and feel like the world is spinning out of the control. Now that she sees a therapist and takes medicine to help with the attacks, Jade has been feeling much better, but she still relies on the elephants at the zoo to keep her calm. While watching the elephants through the zoo's webcam, Jade sees a boy with a red jacket, carrying a baby. She makes it her plan to find out who he is, but what will happen when she finds out abou the secret he's hiding?

Now that I've read three books by Deb Caletti, I'm starting to really like her as an author. All of the books have fantastic writing, and all the stories are so original that I am not bored while reading them. The Nature of Jade is no exception. The story drags in some places, but besides that I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Jade. She actually felt like a real person. I thought it was interesting that she got panic attacks, which is something that I've never seen in protagonist. It was also coincidental that as soon as I finished this book we started a unit on anxiety in my psychology class that covered panic attacks. So it was neat to see how these two things connected and I could use my knowledge about Jade to help me in class. I always like reading a book where I learn something new. And the reader gets to learn about more than just panic attacks. Jade is obssessed (healthily) with elephants, so there was a lot of cool information about elephants placed strategically in the book. In addition to info about elephants, every chapter began with an excerpt about animal behavior, and how it can be similar to human behavior. I thought those were really fun to read and gave the book something extra.


I really liked the love interest, Sebastian (the boy in the red jacket), but felt that he could have been better defined as a character. Sometimes he was a bit bland, but I still liked him. Other characters I liked included Jade's little brother Oliver and Jade's therapist Abe. Both were such sweet and funny characters. Overall, an informative novel about a wide array of topics, that had lovable characters and flawless writing.

9 out of 10.