Am I Normal Yet?
Holly Bourne
Genre(s):  Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Young Adult
Published: August 1st 2015
Pages: 434
Rating: 4 stars

“All Evie wants is to be normal. She’s almost off her meds and at a new college where no one knows her as the girl-who-went-crazy. She’s even going to parties and making friends. There’s only one thing left to tick off her list…

But relationships are messy – especially relationships with teenage guys. They can make any girl feel like they’re going mad. And if Evie can’t even tell her new friends Amber and Lottie the truth about herself, how will she cope when she falls in love?”

As a sufferer of Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) myself, I could instantly connect with Evie as a character, and even found some of my own thoughts and insecurities running through her narrative. I liked the inclusion of the 'bad thoughts' and felt that it was very authentic, because that's exactly what they are. They're silly little things that burrow into the tightest corners of your mind and swell, turning into storm clouds or parasites. They grow and grow with the attention you give them until it feels like your head will burst from the pressure and you just have to find a way to relieve it.

I liked Evie as a character. I thought there had been a lot of research put into her and her disorders, and it didn't read as what I call Typically Mentally Ill: when a person with no experience of mental health tries their hand at writing about mental health and fails miserably. I liked the balance between her personality and her disorders; it didn't feel like she was given them just to be 'quirky' but it didn't feel overly dramatic and as if they were the only side to her.

I also loved how passionate she was about mental health and how she didn't sugar coat things. She was frank about mental illnesses making a person selfish, she mentioned how anxiety disorders can make a person manipulative, and she wasn't shy about how people pretend to understand yet disappear at the first sign of outward symptoms. It was a really refreshing point of view to read from.

However, I took a big issue with the title. I didn't like how the word normal was used, and how there was a check list for it. There were a few times - like in the recovery diary - where I felt more like Evie was joking with herself and using a bit of black humour when she used the term normal, but they were fleeting in the scheme of things. Just because you have a mental illness does not, in any way, shape or form, make you abnormal. Yes, it may feel like it at times (I can attest to that) but it is not true. To me, using 'normal' to refer to non-mentally ill people felt like a slap in the face. For the most part I liked this book but I just could not over look that.

I could have done with the feminism being toned down a bit and done in a more subtle way. As it stands, it was glaringly obvious (which isn't a bad thing!). To me, that made it feel like it was being done because it's the 'popular' thing to do, not because it was genuine. That being said, I do think Bourne managed to get across some very important messages, like how feminism is about equality, not 'women are better than men'.

All in all, I liked this. Definitely give it a shot if you're interested in mental health. It's raw and it doesn't shy away from real problems like relapse.

Dream Literary Collection

I was recently contacted by Ryan from the team at Invaluable - an auction site that features art, jewellery, rare books, and other collectibles - to put together my dream literary collection. After browsing the books on the site, I compiled my list.

Book Talk: Resolutions

I know I'm rather behind schedule with this post, seeing as it's almost February, but better late than never, right?

TBR Feature #3

TBR Feature is the chance for me to, every now and then, pick one of my unread books and discuss it: why I picked it up, when I'll get round to reading it, if I'm still interested in it at all etc.

Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Book Review: Life on the Refrigerator Door by Alice Kuipers

Life on the Refrigerator Door
Alice Kuipers
Genre(s): Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Young adult
Published: July 30th 2015
Pages: 240
Rating: 3 stars

“Life on the Refrigerator Door is told exclusively through notes exchanged by Claire and her mother, Elizabeth, during the course of a life-altering year. Their story builds to an emotional crescendo when Elizabeth is diagnosed with breast cancer.

Stunningly sad but ultimately uplifting, this is a clever, moving, and original portrait of the relationship between a daughter and mother. It is about how we live our lives constantly rushing, and never making time for those we love. It is also an elegy to how much can be said in so few words, if only we made the time to say them.”

I'll admit, I picked this up mainly because it was short and the idea about telling a story solely through notes on a fridge door intrigued me. I feel like novels written in ways other than traditional prose can be hit or miss, and Life on the Refrigerator Door didn't fail to prove me right.

While it was both a short and simple book with not a lot of room for character explanation, I did get a sense of both Claire and her mum as individuals. Claire came across as bubbly and dramatic in a way only a teenager can, and her mum came across as a no-nonsense workaholic. 

It didn't take me long to get through this, in fact I actually tried to drag it out in order to formulate thoughts for a review, which wasn't surprising. A lot of the notes were just that, so the idea worked very well. That being said, I would have liked some to be a bit longer (nothing was really longer than a page) in order to establish things a bit more and pad things out.

The idea behind Life on the Refrigerator Door was good, but I felt that the execution could have been better. Perhaps weaving the notes into prose would have worked out better and told more of a story, rather than a play by play of Claire and her mother's days.

I don't regret picking this up; it was an interesting read. Just not a great one.

Book Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

All the Bright Places
Jennifer Niven
Genre(s): Contemporary, Romance, Young adult
Published: January 8th 2015
Pages: 388
Rating: 2.5 stars

“Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him. 

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister's recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it's unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the 'natural wonders' of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It's only with Violet that Finch can be himself - a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who's not such a freak after all. And it's only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet's world grows, Finch's begins to shrink.”

Going into this and hearing the comparisons to The Fault in Our Stars, I was hoping that I'd like the characters and that they wouldn't be pretentious, overly-obnoxious teens that don't act like any teen ever. In the first few pages, I was happily rewarded with decent characters. Or at least, what I thought were decent characters. 

Finch soon revealed himself to be annoying, pretentious, obnoxious, and one-sided in that he was a non-mentally ill person's idea of what mental illness looks like. It was standard, which is fine as people do suffer like that and everyone is different, but it wasn't good. As someone deeply interested in psychology (and battling my own mental demons) I was sat there thinking 'what about x, y, and z?' These things are not black and white, or a checklist of symptoms, and I was hoping this would portray a wider range of issues, in a way unique to young adult fiction.

I wasn't a fan of all the quotes and pieces of trivia thrown into Finch's chapters. I get that it was part of his character, but it's not something I get on with when reading. It felt out of place, and more like Finch was trying to justify his actions and thoughts rather than actually feeling that way or using it as a way to cope. I don't know. I just wasn't a fan.

Niven's writing, however, was very good. It was easy to read and I got through it at a good pace. I liked the variety she included, with online conversations between Finch and Violet, flashbacks, and the chapter headings. 

In the end, I didn't dislike this. It was okay. Not quite what I wanted but just what I expected. It wasn't a powerful read, but it was definitely a thoughtful one.

2015 End of Year Book Survey

Like last year and the year before that, I'm taking part in The Perpetual Page Turner's end of the year survey. I would also like to add that if you're looking for my previous end of year surveys, you'll have to look under the 'survery' label on my blog, because clearly I can't spell correctly.

Stats

Number of books you read: 95
Number of re-reads: 3
Genre you read the most from: young adult