Let Down Your Hair: Bryony Gordon

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I’ve since learnt that this is a very common reaction to stress, but at the time I just thought I was a freak.

Bryony Gordon is a British journalist, award-winning mental health campaigner and the bestselling author of various books on mental health, including Mad Girl and Glorious Rock Bottom. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. In the words of Jess, her former best friend, “you’re nothing without your hair”, and Barb believes it.Introducing the YA fiction debut from bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon in a modern twist on Rapunzel and one girl's quest to find a different sort of happy ever after.

Barb’s own experience with alopecia is at first a curse and then a wonderful liberation, the catalyst to realising that she has spent much of her young life comparing her insides with everybody’s outsides. With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. Introducing the YA fiction debut from bestselling author and journalist Bryony Gordon in a modern twist on Rapunzel and one girl’s quest to find a different sort of happy ever after.In this stunning retelling of Rapunzel, Barb must learn that she is so much more than her hair and that there is no such thing as a happy ending . They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe. The way the book flips the chronology of the story, made it so engaging and kept me glued to the page. There is a lot to really enjoy in this story and there is great energy to the writing, as well as some fine characterization' - Peter James, award-winning and no.

It just spends so much time talking about the world of social media influencers that the alopecia elements get shoved in at the end. A fearsome, remarkably ambitious novel that breaks through the boundaries of the genre to become epic - in all the best senses of the word. Any sixteen-year-olds would expect trouble, but this is Northern Ireland 2018, where abortion is still illegal. In this stunning retelling of Rapunzel, Barb must learn that she is so much more than her hair and that there is no such thing as a happy ending … just lots of complicated new beginnings. Exploring depression, anxiety, the generational impact of addiction, and bereavement with honesty and remarkable empathy, it also presents the glory of self-determination and friendship with life-affirming power.As happy as I am to see alopecia in a novel, I don’t think it’s just an extra complication to this novel.