Too Cliche?

It sets around a girl named 'Emma' and her friend 'Katie' it starts with Katie's brother sudden death in a drunk driving collision pretty much ruining her whole entire family. Katie turns to unhealthy means (ex; cutting/drinking/etc...) as a way to escape her hurt and her family who now pretty much ignores her in the aftermath. Emma is the supportive fiend and watches in horror as her friend descends allowing herself to become a stereotype and eventually fading away completely, Emma focuses on her friend and keeps her own fears and secrets to herself, in which her brother is distant and cold her and her father is having an affair eventually leading her mother down the road to alcoholism. The stress manifests in Emma (In forms of an eating disorder and depression) as she attempts to keep Katie afloat.

In the end Emma eventually lets go of Katie realizing that she can't rescue katie from herself and it leaves off with Emma entering her therapists office for her very first meeting signalling that she has hope for her future and herself.

Emma: Represents the strength in ourselves but the break that will inevitably come if we don't take care of ourselves.
Katie: Represents human weaknesses and that only you can save yourself.

It would be told in several forms, (Ie; 3rd person in regular story form, Katie in poem form (think ellen hopkins), and Emma in a diary like format.)


Anyway do you see this as too cliche, what can I do to improve it? Will the form be to chaotic, are the characters too unreal or unlikable?


Thanks!

It sounds like another one of those "issue" or "tragic lives" novels. There's a lot of those. They primarily exist to keep people crying while failiing to create sympathy in those that ruined their lives with problems.

Unless your novel is an exposé on the actual problems and explain that it's more important than it looks, people will overlook your book or chuck it, unless they're the type that likes that sort of thing.