Sad Boy is not an easy book—and that’s the point. Set against the author’s teenage years in an alternative high school program in Brookline, Massachusetts, the collection unfolds in four acts that trace hospitalization, first love, destructive relationships, and graduation. It begins starkly—Olmsted Park. Bedsheet noose. Seventeen years old.—and moves forward with a voice that refuses sentimentality. What follows is a coming-of-age rendered with satirical distance and dense pop-culture references, where humor and honesty coexist without apology.
Written by Chris Schneider, Sad Boy blends confessional poetry with cultural commentary, capturing the texture of adolescent crisis while asking bigger questions about identity, belonging, and survival. Illustrated by Steven Bentley and introduced by poet DeQuan Wren, the book doesn’t offer tidy lessons or “healing” platitudes. It offers witness. It looks straight at psychiatric wards with confiscated shoelaces, romantic implosions, and a graduation ceremony that feels like a mock execution—and it doesn’t look away.
Sad Boy is defiance written through cultural wreckage: ancient history colliding with teenage destruction, survival spoken plainly, without varnish.
Content warning: This book contains depictions of suicide attempts, self-harm, and psychiatric crisis.
If you or someone you know is struggling, in the U.S. you can call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You’re not alone, and help is available.
