This book definitely found a place in my heart and I now need to go and read the rest in the series, and her other books. If you love a little bit of cheesy highschool romance I think you will love this but also if you like books that allow you to almost submerge yourself in the role of the character this very much does so. I now feel the need to run away to America to explore more, the little road trips in this book just sounded so gorgeous. This topic is also well discussed in the story - what the word “normal” implies and its consequences.

Maybe there in a set amount of crying your body needs to deal with any trauma. There’s a certain water-level of tears you need to shed until you can find acceptance or move on or whatever. And, if you don’t cry them out, they just catch up with you.” Unfourtantly, there were also comments and parts that I felt contradicted the whole message of the book.

Inspired by what she saw, she started writing teen fiction, including the best-selling, award-winning ‘Spinster Club’ series which helps educate teenagers about feminism. When she turned thirty, Holly wrote her first adult novel, 'How Do You Like Me Now?', examining the intensified pressures on women once they hit that landmark. My sympathies lie, for the most part, with Amber. After all, in addition to being the protagonist, she is also a teenager, while her mom is a parent. Nevertheless, despite the first-person narration, Bourne still manages to portray Amber and her mom’s fraught relationship with depth and complexity. We see her mom’s pain, the daily struggle of a recovering alcoholic—but we see it through the eyes of the child whom it has affected so dearly. And, yeah, Amber says some harsh things, does things that might not be advisable—but it all makes sense in the context of what she has gone through. How Hard Can Love Be? neither sugarcoats nor sensationalizes the life of a recovering alcoholic and her estranged teenage daughter: Bourne carefully distills the truth, for all its vinegar. The main love interest did, like, at least 2 speeches on how rough it is to be a “nice guy” and my butthole clenched each and every time without fail. Fitting that his name is , I kid you not, “Kyle”. She appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2018, alongside author Cat Clarke, discussing her book Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes?, mental health, and resolve. [12] The event was chaired by author Alex Nye. [13] And then there’s prom king Kyle, the guy all the girls want. Can he really be interested in anti-cheerleader Amber? Even with best friends Evie and Lottie’s advice, there’s no escaping the fact: love is hard.

Also, on the subject of stigmas, Holly is not an author to shy away from controversial subjects. I can count on one hand, if I think really hardly, the amount of books I've read that discuss periods, and I mean actually discuss, not just gloss over them, or make them into jokes about PMSing or whatnot. As someone who has periods, like half the population of the whole world, they shouldn't be hidden away and made a 'controversial' subject. To be honest, none of us would be here without periods, just saying. If you think about it like that, shouldn't more be done to make them more 'normal'. There was no cliched 'happy ending' or love making it all better in the end. It was about her accepting and finding herself first. There were strong elements of feminism and its theories in this book and I love how Holly Bourne infused that in.

BookBliss

Am I Normal Yet? is a very good book and I loved it. I loved seeing myself represented and it will definitely help me when it comes to my anxiety and OCDs. However, I wish the feminism talked about in this book was intersectional and didn’t exclude anyone, nor made anyone feel bad for talking about men. Yes, women are more than just lovers, mothers or wives, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to shade someone else for liking another person or even dating. Judging is never the key, and your feminism should always include everyone in it. The ableism and fat shaming in this book was astonishing. There’s one scene in which a man in this book was listing off reasons on why having a crush on Erik from The Phantom Of The Opera was weird and wrong and his NUMBER ONE reason was that Erik is disfigured, do I need to say anymore? As for the fat shaming, there’s a kid in this book who’s fat and his fatness is literally mentioned almost everytime he’s in a scene in ambers mind and it’s not in a positive way. So Amber, why’s it okay for you to think these things about this child? Because you befriended him out of pity and somehow that makes it ok for YOU to fat shame him? Yikes. Mein Lieblingscharakter war Kyle und ich bin unendlich traurig, dass wir seinen Charakter nicht detaillierter kennenlernen durften, weil er so komplex und extrem interessant ist. Das fand ich echt mega schade! Ich hoffe sehr, das Holly auf so einen Charakter in einem anderen Buch nochmals näher eingeht.