Publisher – Tor Teen

Published – Out Now

Price - £13.99 paperback £6.33 Kindle eBook

Caleb Michaels is a sixteen-year-old champion running back. Other than that his life is pretty normal. But when Caleb starts experiencing mood swings that are out of the ordinary for even a teenager, his life moves beyond “typical.”

Caleb is an Atypical, an individual with enhanced abilities. Which sounds pretty cool except Caleb's ability is extreme empathy—he feels the emotions of everyone around him. Being an empath in high school would be hard enough, but Caleb's life becomes even more complicated when he keeps getting pulled into the emotional orbit of one of his classmates, Adam. Adam's feelings are big and all-consuming, but they fit together with Caleb's feelings in a way that he can't quite understand. 

Caleb's therapist, Dr. Bright, encourages Caleb to explore this connection by befriending Adam. As he and Adam grow closer, Caleb learns more about his ability, himself, his therapist—who seems to know a lot more than she lets on—and just how dangerous being an Atypical can be. 

There has been a very long tradition of using superheroes to explore social issues. Superman a tale of an alien immigrant told by immigrants; the x-men has drawn many parallels with issues of race and sexuality and this leads to the concept of how it feels to be seen on the outside of humanity as not fitting the standard norm of a culture in a particular period. The Bright Sessions uses the idea of various people with superpowers visiting their therapist to resolve many issues in their life – I’ve loved it for its focus on the humans behind the powers as well as the ongoing storyline. In the Infinite Noise the podcast’s creator Lauren Shippen focuses on the lives of two characters who find their friendship despite their secrets moving into something far deeper.

The tale focuses on Caleb and Adam two high school students. Adam is the quiet, bright but incredibly shy but openly gay student. Caleb is a well-known proficient football player who tends to be distant from his team and classmates but prone to strange outburst of anger. We discover that Caleb is a developing empath – someone able to feel the emotions of those around him. Which if yoi cast your mind back to your teenage years will make High School challenging to say the least. Adam’s own shyness, fears and overwhelming sadness keeps making Caleb start to focus on Adam and an incident ends up hugely embarrassing the private student about his depression. With the encouragement of his therapist though Caleb wants to put things right so starts to make the effort to build an actual friendship with Adam. That actually gets reciprocated but the emotions that Caleb ends up feeling are unexpected and eventually the two discover they really really like each other.

By far the strongest element of this story is the central romance between the two characters. With the idea of a struggling empath and a repressed teen slowly falling for each other what really struck me was this is a tale prepard to talk about the feelings that male teens have all the time. The classic toxic view of masculinity is don’t talk about your feelings and on the outside neither Caleb or Adam enjoy sharing what they feel/sense. Shippen though gives us the two characters in alternating chapters giving their views on the story in real time. We get to see events from each other’s perspective but importantly how explore the feelings and their emotional states. Shippen really captures the horrible feelings that our teenage years get – fear of failure, crushes, bullying and that awkwardness we can feel for our parents; but also we get the feelings of a growing attraction plus that fear of rejection. Its refreshing to see male characters talk about their feelings and fears plus this makes you see these two are made for each other and possibly help each other learn who they are. That growing plot and exploration of character is wonderful to soak up in. Its also something you only got hints of in the podcast’s many plot threads.

Weirdly the element I didn’t enjoy was in the final stages of the book the other podcast plot threads start to intrude. They actually distracted me from the main story of the romance and seemed more just as an indicator of hey this is part of a shared world rather than helping the main plot of this story. Perhaps would have been better to seed this much earlier into the book. Weirdly this is where the podcast is much better at controlling the arc of Dr Bright and her patients with their own personal development. But this section really for me became clunky and unnecessary which I think speaks for the power of the romance that I found that more interesting than mutant powers and secret organisations!

Overall I have to recommend this if you’d enjoy a strong teenage romance and I think if you’re a fan of the podcast – you get two wonderful fleshed out versions of Caleb and Adam in print form; but I’d caution that its better to think of this as a side spin-off rather than a pure adaptation. Those wanting more heroics may be disappointed, but I think the emotional journey of these characters made this on balance a very interesting read.