Review of "Sanity Test" by K.E. Adamus

Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

In the words of Sandra Bullock's character from The Heat, "Mental illness is no laughing matter."

That may be true UNLESS it's a K.E. Adamus book! In the past, Adamus explored addiction, eating disorders, and more with a surprisingly lighthearted and humorous flair.

This book takes us into the marvelous, fascinating world of paranoid schizophrenia! Exciting!
You've got our attentions! Especially as victims and targets of people with paranoid schizophrenia.

Books like Memoir of a Mangled Mind by Steven Simmons Shelton and You Will Never Be Normal by Catherine Klatzer (both about disassociative identity disorder) take a much more serious and realistic glimpse into the experience of one who is mentally ill.

In contrast, Sanity Test by K.E. Adamus takes a nose-thumbing, sassy, and sarcastic view at mental illness while somehow staying authentic.

Look, we don't want to be insensitive (well, this book gently invites us to be), but people with paranoid schizophrenia (or whatever they've renamed it to make it sound nicer these days) have a propensity to say and believe some weird, disturbing, freaky @%$ $h*!t. These things range from hyperreligious delusions to worldwide government conspiracies to believing their dog is an alien spy or secretly a werewolf.

It's strange and amazing how this mental health disorder is authentically portrayed in this book, all while the book still maintains a lighthearted and humorous tone.

What hit us between the eyes is how familiar all of this seems, even the ridiculous stuff. We've literally had people send us e-mails, DMs, and text messages like these. And we've literally had to deal with how seemingly useless and inept law enforcement and the American justice system can be at dealing with threats, stalking, and harrassment like this. Like, we literally just scored a warrant for one of their arrests... after taking five years of harrassment, threats, and abuse from them, all while law enforcement said, "Oh, well, maybe she's just mentally ill. Have you ever thought of that? Just block her." Oh, so just because the stalker is mentally ill, we all have to feel unsafe and in danger, like we're going to be murdered by a psycho every day? Sounds legit. What a broken system. Oh, and by the way, blocking does nothing because some psychos have like 30+ different accounts to match all of their personalities and delusions.

So, to say this book jived with us would be an understatement.

There's even a part of this book that matches this exactly, saying:

"The officers suggested blocking the person who sends me emails. However, this does not solve the issue of their identity. The emails received so far do not qualify as criminal threats or anything similar, so the police can’t do anything about it. I would block this person, but I’m afraid they will
continue scheming. So far, they keep informing me about the progress of their mania."

Gee, thanks officer! Gee, thanks, law enforcement! Gee, thanks, American justice system! That helps a lot. Now they can stalk us secretly and convertly rather than explicitly and overtly. Genius!
Why did we never think of that!?

Yeah, we stalk our stalker because 1. Law enforcement barely does crap, 2. It's the only way to figure out what the stalker is up to and what they're scheming (so, it's a way to protect ourselves and stay informed while the authoritites keep us in the dark).

Believe it or not, a lot of these stalkers aren't super secret ninja people. They tend to never shut the hell up online. It's like they're proud of it and can't resist letting the world know how unhinged they are.

ANYWAY... personal resonance aside... this book is actually fun to read.

No, it's not top-tier, elite-quality literature. However, it's thought-provoking and entertaining.

A snarky email war erupts between Hubert Kawka, a self-aware patient with persecutory delusions, and Dr. Włodzimierz Pawski, a brittle psychiatrist. Their back-and-forth spirals into police notices, press whispers, and the arrival of Curator, a chaos-gremlin of a dog who keeps peeing on museum doors--turning satire into full-on farce. As coincidences start echoing Hubert’s “fiction,” Pawski’s certainty cracks, and the power dynamic quietly flips.

It often seems like Dr. Pawski is going against professional advice. Rather than ignoring Hubert's delusion-filled e-mails, he actually responds to and feeds them! As is typical in a K.E. Adamus book, shenanigans and hijinks ensue!

The example that stands out in our minds is when Hubert starts going down the standard "The end of the world is nigh!" route. The psychiatrist should be like, "Hey, let's come back down to reality. The sky isn't falling. There's no indication that the world is ending anytime soon." Instead, he goes right into:

"Let me reveal a secret: the end of the world is near.
Please begin stockpiling water and food. Do not leave
your home — if you stray more than 10 meters from it,
the end of the world will occur instantly.
You must not communicate in any language other
than Polish. If you utter even a single word in a foreign
tongue, the end of the world will occur instantly.
Please stop going to work. I’ve received word that
'they' will be waiting for you there."

DUUUUUDE! Is it bad that we're laughing and kinda cheering the doctor on?

Like, one of our stalkers was once like, "YOU'RE ALL KILLERS! MURDERERS! YOU ALL TRIED TO KILL ME WITH YOUR CAR!"

And someone replied, "Gee, looks like we should've tried harder."

We don't drive or own a car by the way.

Anyway... Pawski is super insensitive at times.
Tact or bedside manner are apparently not things that exist in his mind. Then again, we don't blame him at all in this scenario.

He bluntly replies to the patient:

"Please visit the nearest psychiatric clinic, schedule an
appointment, buy your medication, and start taking it. I
am not writing this out of concern for your insignificant
person, but out of concern for society, which is forced to
interact with you"

DAAAAAAANG!

And the patient, Hubert, has a sense of humor too. It's bizarrely relatable. For example, he says:

"I might remember something once you review my novel."

As authors, we all know we'd do just about anything for a review, especially on Amazon. Even crazy people know that.

See... maybe they're not so crazy after all i.e. they're all actually fit to stand trial and the "insansity defense" is absolute garbage B.S. manufactured by people who had nothing better to do than complicate our complicated justice system.

Oh, and by the way, it turns out that Hubert's aunt is probably Pelagia ("Fate"), the sketchy old professor who dies and is kept in a freezer at the beginning of To Outwit the Fate, one of the author's other books! That was cool! We love intertextual stuff.

It's possible that they're two different people given that one had a "funeral" and they seem to have different last names, but we're going to chalk that up to Pelagia probably having been married before (so, having a previous husband's last name as well as her original one) and there being a small private ceremony after Matt's crimes (fraud and mishandling of a human corpse or whatever) were discovered.

Did we mention how funny we find it that the doctor becomes grounded and dependent on these interactions? It's almost like they keep him going day by day. Like a pen pal, only a crazy one.

Anyway, this book was a fun read.

Check it out on Amazon!