Review: Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

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?




Ikira's Review: 3 out of 5 stars

What to say? I actually really enjoyed this story to begin with. It follows Evie, a young lady suffering with mental health issues. She wants to be 'normal', behave like a normal teenager as she see's them and experience life how it 'should' be done. 

Evie is trying to navigate through life with the help of her parents, younger (but often wiser) sister and therapist. She's trying to make new friends whilst keeping hold of the one friend who was there through her darkest times but not let her secret out...that's a lot for any of us to handle but Evie does reasonably well.

We follow her journey through reducing her medication and all that entails. As a mental health sufferer, I was glad to see this being openly talked about. The sometimes exceptionally random thoughts which we have, the potentially 'ridiculous' notions and seemingly crazy actions we experience. The author sheds light on these issues with enough detail to keep it real and enough humour to keep it from getting heavy and dark. A well balanced story...

That is until it gets all about feminism. The Spinster Club seems a funky, cute idea to begin with but then it seems as though the author goes off on a tangent with only an agenda to consider rather than rounding off the story nicely. I was left disappointed in the end. 

So, if you do want to give it a go, beware the ending may not be what you expect. You may agree with the authors view, you may not. I won't say if I do or not and that's not my issue. My issue is finding such strong agenda in what was meant to be a light hearted read.