By Kruthi Nandam – Staff Reporter

*WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS*

“Monday’s Not Coming” is a YA book written by Tiffany D. Jackson that addresses the issues of depression, abuse, and bullying. 

This book starts off with the main character Claudia looking for her best friend named Monday. Claudia is searching for Monday because she hasn’t seen her in a long time and she is starting to get worried about her and her safety.

Claudia and Monday always spend time together to the point where they are inseparable. They both know where they are at all times and never miss a chance to see each other. One day, Monday didn’t come to school and Claudia was concerned but didn’t think much about it.

A few more days pass by and Monday still hasn’t returned to school so Claudia starts to worry. She goes to Monday’s house to check if she’s OK and her sister April says that Monday was doing good but she wasn’t at the house. Claudia wasn’t satisfied with the answer so she started a private investigation.

Claudia does some digging and soon finds out that Monday hasn’t seen her siblings in a really long time. So all this time she was being lied to by April. Claudia tells her parents about Monday’s absence, but it doesn’t really get in their head. Claudia still continued her investigation where she found out more details. 

At school, everyone knows that Claudia and Monday are best friends and they have never seen each other without one of them not talking. As some kids start to notice Claudia isolating herself, they take this opportunity to bully Claudia and tease her about her friend.

The bullies started absurd rumors about Monday and Claudia and how Claudia may have something to do with Monday not coming to school. The bullies made fun of Claudia’s dyslexia. All of this chatter about the both of them got to Claudia and she started to have random outbursts of anger causing her trouble at school.

She decided to break into Monday’s house to clarify what is happening. When she got into to Monday’s house, she could tell the house was not kept very clean and it seemed very dirty. As she looked around for Monday, she couldn’t spot her.Claudia soon finds Monday’s diary and takes it to read it. The door opens and someone was yelling very loudly. That someone was Monday’s mother. She seemed to order April to do things for her and verbally abused April. Before Claudia left, she saw Monday’s younger sister in dirty clothes and she looked like she hasn’t taken a shower in a long time.

Claudia manages to escape and she starts to read Monday’s journal. The journal contained hidden secrets of Monday and the struggles she has been going through at home. No of which Monday has ever mentioned to Claudia. Claudia starts to go through depression and she finds it hard to cope and manage her stress.

A few days pass by, and a news story drops which it said that 2 kids were found dead stuffed inside of a fridge. Claudia soon found out this incident was taking place on her street. As she looked for the house, she discovered that the news story was about Monday’s house.

Claudia went inside the house and she discovered that her best friend was killed and stuffed inside the fridge along with her younger brother. Claudia didn’t know how to process this information and she had a huge mental breakdown about her best friend.

April knew the whole time of what happened to Monday but she was forced by her mother to not reveal anything. Monday’s mother suffered from a mental problem and she took out her rage on both Monday and her brother Tuesday. This went so far to the point where her mother killed them. April was forced to stuff her siblings in the fridge and not speak about it.

Claudia goes into shock leading her to go to the hospital. It has been two years since she found out about her death and Claudia still relives the day like it was yesterday. This incident happened when she was 14 and now that she is 16 she can’t stop repeating it. 

Claudia was diagnosed with extreme post-traumatic stress disorder and disassociative amnesia. This really set back her and her family mentally and took a long time to make some progress. For those that like realistic fiction with real-life situations this is a great book to read. 

The strengths of “Monday’s Not Coming” are that the book shows how some kids in the real world may rely on their friends for everything which references to Monday and Claudia’s friendship. The book also had an interesting plot twist at the end; it took a wild turn and truly was an experience. The author also had a different way of writing the chapters. Instead of the chapters having numbers, they are titled “the before,” “the after,” and “one year the before.” Overall, this book was a very compelling read.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars