Like Us, the Polar Bears

Mix a little hope, friendship, and self-perception with anxiety, loss, and change, and you have the ingredients for Like Us, the Polar Bears. Seventeen-year-old Molly Ohashi wants to save polar bears who are losing out to climate change and shrinking ice. However, Molly is fighting just as hard for her own survival. Her high anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder render her insecure and socially inept. She lives with her mother, who doesn't understand her, and misses her father, who lives in another state. When Molly's vivacious best friend, who seems to have a perfect life, commits suicide, Molly struggles to find footing in her rapidly changing reality. She meets Sig Despain, her biology lab partner by default. Cool, laid-back, and a little eccentric, Sig unwittingly assumes the role of Molly's life guide. Facing his own issues, Sig takes an opposite approach to living that Molly finds both intriguing and enviable. Together, they concoct a strategy to save polar bears, but little do they know in what directions their quest will take them, and the different effects it will have on them both. Sig harbors a secret that ultimately will change Molly's outlook, and push her to attempt something she never would've dreamed of doing. He challenges her perceptions of the world and more importantly, of herself. In their adventures-and misadventures-together campaigning to help the polar bears, Molly and Sig must figure out if they have what it takes to keep going when, like the polar bears, they find themselves treading in the rough waters of life with nothing to hold on to.