The stigma surrounding mental health issues seems to be of great interest at the moment. In this book Holly Bourne seems to be going to great lengths to shatter our preconceived notions of what certain conditions mean/how they affect people.
16-year old Evie wants nothing more than to be normal, whatever that is, and we follow her through her days as she starts college and starts the process of reducing the medication she takes to help her live with her anxiety and OCD. More than anything she no longer wants to be known as the girl who went crazy, and she’d also quite like a boyfriend, but she struggles to work out what are typical reactions to the situations she’s in and what are the symptoms of her condition.
Her fear of how others will judge her was brought home with the excruciating account of her date with Oli. It highlighted just how easy it is to bandy around terms like ‘mental’ without really thinking about the implications of their use.
While this all sounds very worthy, the thing that struck me most was about this book was the warmth of the characters and the humorous way in which Bourne relates their experiences. Definitely one that I could see appealing to readers for many different reasons…