Mad Love, by Suzanne Selfors

Alice is in trouble. Her mother, a romance author crowned the Queen of Romance, is in a psychiatric facility getting treatment for bipolar disorder, and if she doesn't write another book in the next few weeks then they are going to be utterly and completely broke. The only solution Alice can think of is to write the book herself under her mother's name-but what should she write about? Enter Eros, the crazy guy who thinks he's Cupid. Eros keeps bothering Alice and begging her to write his story, about his tragic love with Psyche. Alice has only a few weeks to put together her novel while taking care of her mother and trying not to alienate the cute guy who she's been crushing on for months who she finally met. Can she do it?

This book is a lot more serious than I expected, which is why I included more in my summary than the publishers did in theirs. From the summary I expected a happy-go-lucky love story about a girl biting off more than she can chew, but instead this book was rife with sicknesses of the body and the mind, serious financial problems, and personal blackmail. It was sort of like taking a bite of what you think is cotton candy and getting a bite of chicken instead. You still enjoy the chicken, but you're confused as to what happened to the cotton candy. (I just realized how stupid that sounds, but if you read the book you'd understand what I was talking about.) This also prepared me for the cheesiness of the romance because even though the book was a lot grittier than I thought it would be, Alice and Tony's romance was just as bubbly and superficial as I had predicted. However, this didn't annoy me nearly as much as it usually would, just because I knew it would be like that.

I thought it was really cool to read about bipolar disorder because I had just learned about it in my abnormal psychology class before reading the book. When Alice described her mother's symptoms and actions I was able to reference my notes in my head and see how they matched up, which they did perfectly.

The main reason why I would recommend this book to anyone is because of how original it is. There are many takes on the Cupid and Psyche romance, but this one was different than the others because the main character was not Cupid or Psyche but someone else totally. 

4.7 stars

When you're the daughter of the bestselling Queen of Romance, life should be pretty good. But 16-year-old Alice Amorous has been living a lie ever since her mother was secretly hospitalized for mental illness. After putting on a brave front for months, time is running out. The next book is overdue, and the Queen can't write it. Alice needs a story for her mother-and she needs one fast.

That's when she meets Errol, a strange boy who claims to be Cupid, who insists that Alice write about the greatest love story in history: his tragic relationship with Psyche. As Alice begins to hear Errol's voice in her head and see things she can't explain, she must face the truth-that she's either inherited her mother's madness, or Errol is for real.