[Review] Am I Normal Yet? (Normal, #1) by Holly Bourne

Title: Am I Normal Yet? 
Author: Holly Bourne
Publication: August 1st 2015 by Usborne
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary
Pages: 434
Format: Paperback

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?

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My thoughts:

I received a review copy from Usborne in exchange for an honest review. This does not influence my review.

First, kudos to Holly Bourne for being real and staying real. Her book talks about reality, and other things in between that I didn’t know of. This book will definitely open your eyes to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is widely misused for some reasons. To be honest, I was one of the misusers of OCD since I always bring up the acronym “OCD” everywhere and anywhere I go every time there is an imperfection, but really, I don’t have it. Not like Evie though.

This book is about being normal, and desperately wanting to be normal. Evie, a girl with OCD, suffers from repeatedly wanting to make herself and her surroundings clean. But in the same time, she wants to be as normal as everyone else is. As she enters college, she finds things that will make her normal. Friends. Boyfriends. And such.

“Everyone’s on the cliff edge of normal. Everyone finds life an utter nightmare sometimes, and there’s no ‘normal’ way of dealing with it… There is no normal, Evelyn.”

The blurbs and reviews from several people piqued my interest as I kept on reading this. They say that this one was an eye-opener. Also, they say that the author finally gets it. After reading this, I was way sure that yes, all those reviews that I have read came true. I am not a girl, but it is too difficult to want to be in the main character’s shoes. Her life is miserable, and I can’t even imagine being her.

I have no problem with the characters. They are fun and interesting to read, but it was just too fun, which is totally fine. Her friends. Her boyfriends. Those characters are fine. As deceiving as their looks, I’m pretty sure that it’s real to our world. Although I’ve managed to have a love-hate relationship with the main character, Evie. It’s not that she’s spoiled or something, but there’s something about her OCD that’s making her the character hated by people (albeit understandable).

Maybe my mental health condition was chronic stupidity.
That, or delusion.
That, or plain old hope.
Hope is a mental health condition, right?

Moving on to the style of writing; I love how easy it is to read this book. The writing is simple, yet contains a lot of deep meanings. Honestly, her writing made me flip those pages even though I badly want to sleep. I wanted to sleep after reaching the three-hundredth page, but alas, I finished it without even noticing it. Now, cover-wise, it’s amazing. It does not entail about OCD, but the story just surprised me as comparing it to the cover itself, although I had problems with the start of this book; it did not really grab my attention.

I definitely recommend you reading this book to be aware, of course. It’s the contemporary that we all want. Balanced romance. Balanced bitchiness. Has lots of message and lessons for the readers to learn. I will absolutely read anything written by Holly Bourne.

4 swords to defeat OCD because it sucks.

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About the author:

Holly Bourne writes for young adults for a living. She is a journalist for www.TheSite.org, an advice and information website for 16-25 year-olds.

Before this, she spent two years working as a local news reporter on the Surrey Mirror and was nominated as Print Journalist of the Year 2010. She also has a first class degree in Journalism Studies and has won awards for her writing.

Her debut novel, Soulmates, is published by Usborne on September 1, 2013.

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