#165 in Young adult
Challenger Deep
- 320
- Pages
- about 6 h
- Reading time
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Our view
Neal Shusterman’s “Challenger Deep” is a powerful, unsettling novel that lets readers inside a teenager’s mind as schizophrenia takes hold. Some readers value its humane portrait of mental illness; others needed time to accept its strange double structure, a sea voyage set against everyday life, before it gripped them. Drawn from the author’s experience with his own son, it suits older teenagers and adults ready for a dark, moving book.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Challenger Deep is a 2015 young adult novel by Neal Shusterman about a teenager's onset of schizophrenia. The story was based on his own son. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Young People's Literature and was placed on "Best of the Year" lists by Publishers Weekly, the New York Public Library, and the American Library Association.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.1 across 71 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 33% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Young adult average of 7.8. That is how 7.9 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.1 | 71 | 100% |
Frequently asked
What age is Challenger Deep for?
Challenger Deep sits on the Young adult shelf in the sources we use, which by convention means roughly ages 13 and up. This is a guide from the book’s category, not a publisher’s age rating. It has 320 pages — shorter than 85% of the ranked books in Young adult.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Young adult — and a score of 7.9, the closest to this book.
