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?
| Wow, this book was a roller coaster of emotions to read. Evelyn, or Evie, is just starting to lower her medication to combat her OCD symptoms. Wanting to experience a "normal" teenage life, she begins to make new friends and perhaps experience real romance for the first time. Except her symptoms start creeping back - only this time, Evie's not willing to admit they're back, afraid that she'll disappoint her family, that her new friends will find out and not want to be around her to deal with mental issues, that she will be "mental" for the rest of her life. Bourne did such a good job conveying the struggles someone might go through with this mental illness, drawing out the problems in our society with stigmas about mental illness, society's casual use of mental illness buzzwords, like "OCD" or "crazy," without realizing how much such casual use of these words might hurt those with actual illnesses. With the character of Evelyn, Bourne is able to bring a light to this issue while still constructing a teenage character with real teenage problems that traditional YA books attempt to highlight. Evie gets crushes, she has family problems, she worries about what her friends might think, all issues tackled in many YA novels. While highlighting mental illness, Bourne does not let it define Evie's character, still showing her in the same light as any other YA-driven novel. This story was so compelling - I felt things very deeply while reading Evie's character, and I especially enjoyed how feminism became a rallying cry for her and her friends, who start their own "spinster" club, to take back the word spinster and perhaps bring about a new, enlightened way of living in a world full of benevolent as well as blatant sexism. While the type of feminism discussed isn't as intersectional as I'm sure some would like, it is still an important component that most YA books do not even attempt to touch, so I applaud Bourne for bringing the topic of feminism, as how teen girls experience it, in this book. The narration was so witty and the cast of characters all felt well rounded and real. I am so happy I finally got a chance to read this book and I will definitely be recommending it to everyone. |
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