At a young age the author writes fiction pieces as she battles her own demons. Each piece owns a part of her mind and a bit of her heart. Topics such as depression, heartbreak, society, loss and her outlook of the world fills the pages in an original and previously unseen way.

This was an unusual book – a collection of very poetic short stories which vaguely revolve around mental illness and personal angst. The second part of the book contained a collection of poems written by the author about her view of the world.

The writing style was a lot more poetic than I’d usually read but the content somehow works, despite very little taking place in each story. The purpose of these stories is to look through the eyes of someone who sees the world through the lens of mental illness or eccentricity of thought, which is a cool idea.

What I would say is that this book could do with some serious editing – this book is still in a very raw form and though in some ways that does add to its appeal, there are some parts that don’t make sense at all and others with unnecessary typos. If this book didn’t have so much potential, I would just axe a star off the review and be done with it but this author has so much to give and deserves the best possible face for her work.

The stories themselves are odd and haunting. Each one is a little snapshot of a mind disturbed in some way; depression, psychosis, addiction. Not all of them are convincing but for the most part, the author sticks with what she knows and delivers them well. The ones from the perspective of someone with depression rang true to me, with the odd detachment to reality and the pondering of odd thoughts.

There is a lot of suicidal thought in this book, to the point that it is quite disturbing and I’d recommend avoiding this book if you’re having any suicidal thoughts of your own because it’s romanticised and comes up A LOT.

My favourite story in this book was the first, it was a little darker than most and contained a coherent (though murderous) train of thought. Diary of the Mad is a book I’d recommend for anyone looking for something a little different to open their minds to alternative ways of looking at the world.