Am I Normal Yet? (The Spinster Club Series #1)

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While many may consider mental health a difficult topic to speak about, let alone publish a novel on, this is what makes it so necessary. And this is the point of the book - to get people think about the jokes and flippant remarks that are based on mental health issues. Evie has just started college and is trying to seem as ‘normal’ as possible and suppress her illness. At last a YA book has come along that challenges the mixed messages that modern society sends out to girls and introduces young openly feminist characters who I m sure will become heroes to teen girls everywhere.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Bournes writing style is completely gripping and the story flips between current events and looking back at how things were when she was very ill, before she was ‘normal’.She meets her therapist once a week, finally cuts her worries list down to a single page, and is lowering her medication for OCD and anxiety. That doesn't mean I can't see the wonderful message or the beautiful aspect of having friends, it just doesn't work for me anymore. I started this book for two reasons, one being that Holly Bourne will be attending YALC 2018 in London, where I am going in a few weeks, and the other being my friend Roxanne who told me to do so.

Just sit down with a nice cup of tea (or coffee, for the weird ones among you) and some relaxing music and you will find yourself immersed in wonderful story that gives lessons about friends, men, feminism and anxieties. She's losing her best friend Jane to her boyfriend Joel, who plays in a terrible heavy rock band, and goes on a string of terrible dates with Ethan, Oli, and Guy, whilst her therapist warns her about the complex difficulties that dating will bring to her life. It's so cute to use your 'superior' intellect to make another girl the butt of your 'feminist' joke.

In this way, these three young women very directly engage with the concept of patriarchy and the fact that society makes so much out of women being objects. There were moments that made me laugh way loud and made me punch-the-wall angry and just heartachingly sad. She worries about all the usual teenage dramas but she also worries about her rituals and being normal. I also love books that talk so explicitly about feminism and position their protagonists as feminists.

A realistic take on OCD and the laugh out loud humor interlaced throughout the book made it a fun read. Durch ihre Krankheit hat sie den Großteil ihres Teenager-Daseins in einer Klinik verbracht und all die Dinge verpasst, die Teenager normalerweise tun. I like the offset “bad” and “good” thoughts, though I confess I wasn’t a huge fan of Evie’s bubbliness at the beginning of the book, and I’m a little curmudgeonly about this trend of SHOUTING AT THE READER when we have perfectly good italics to get the job done. All things you can find in this story because no, there is nothing like a “bad feminist”, but there is a person who may not know a lot of stuff yet. Let’s get right into the best parts: Bourne’s portrayal of feminism here is so interesting and refreshing.I loved how Evie and her friends were just getting started on their journey into feminism and so they were each at different stages and continued to learn as they went along. There was altogether too much boy stuff in here for my liking, and while I get the point of its inclusion it was still UNPLEASANT TO READ. Holly Bourne tackles the big issues that teenage girls face daily: feminism, mental health, friendship and boy drama and shows how these themes are intertwined and affect one another making life as a teenage girl treacherous to navigate. The groundbreaking and bestselling first Spinster Club novel from YA star Holly Bourne - "A brutal and brilliant takedown of how we talk about mental illness, feminism, and friendship. Instead of seizing a perfect moment to sympathize with someone, to find someone who would understand her struggle, Evie twists it around and uses it as a moment to validate her attempt at normality.