Am I Normal Yet? (The Spinster Club Series #1)

Product Information

Young Adult fiction takes over the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2018". Edinburgh Festival. 12 July 2018 . Retrieved 3 September 2018.

It’s repetitive but also can give a fresh point of view about what it means to deal with it every day of your life. Especially being a teenager on medications, when all you wanna do is “be normal”. I know I'm a little late to the Holly Bourne party, and I'm sorry about that. After reading spectacular book, I definitely need more of her books! I definitely need to support more UKYA authors, and Holly is perfect for this. The message of inclusion and understanding was torn to shreds by the little "feminist group" that the main character Evie and two of her friends created. They created the 'Spinster Club', which consisted of them preaching about topics (where they came across as naive and bitchy), talking about boys and tearing other girls down.

To me, Am I Normal Yet? covers the issue of mental health, and what being a teenager in modern Britain is like, to a T. Now, I've never had any interaction with OCD, so please correct me if I offend anyone - I really don't mean to. I just feel like the way Holly treated Evie's OCD was done perfectly. It wasn't hushed up like it was a bad thing; rather, it was explained in a clear way, and shown that while it can be painful and heartbreaking to sufferers and their families, there are various methods to deal with it. Just because you may suffer from OCD, anxiety, etc., does not mean you are crazy. There is such a stigma around the topic of mental health, and I think if more people read books like this (or like Every Last Word, which I reviewed last week) there would be a greater understanding on these topics. Yeah, there were boys in the book, and a little romance, but Evie's entire world didn't just change when a lad started liking her. Her whole world didn't suddenly shift off it's axis, and now revolve around him. She stayed true to herself, and I loved that, because I loved everything about Evie! one of my favourite things was how the author gave us an insight into evie's mind. she gives things titles like "bad thought" and it'll describe the actual feelings shes going through 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’s only what’s normal to you.” Anywho, I've ranted enough. I adored the friendship between Evie, Amber, and Lottie! They're the type of friend group I wish I had grouping up (and still do, to be honest). They talked about real stuff, not just the stereotypical 'girly' gossip, etc. It was a true feminist group, and should be shown to everyone out there - old, young; male, female - to show just what feminism is.

Also, on the subject of stigmas, Holly is not an author to shy away from controversial subjects. I can count on one hand, if I think really hardly, the amount of books I've read that discuss periods, and I mean actually discuss, not just gloss over them, or make them into jokes about PMSing or whatnot. As someone who has periods, like half the population of the whole world, they shouldn't be hidden away and made a 'controversial' subject. To be honest, none of us would be here without periods, just saying. If you think about it like that, shouldn't more be done to make them more 'normal'. I've spent most of my life waiting; basically, since I can remember I dreamed about finding a best friend and all that crap. Then I had a time while I tried to convince myself I didn't need anyone to be happy, and now I'm pretty sure I'll die alone. The girls are amazing! Evie, Amber and Lottie form a gang called the The Spinster Club to help figure out how to be a feminist. They aim to stay true to themselves, and not lose their personality or their friends while trying to impress guys, and at the same time not being ball breakers! It was such a fun theme but also very powerful and inspiring.i've been hearing so many amazing things about this book from my friends so naturally my expectations were REALLY high and still yet it managed to give me so many emotions and teach me so many things Wow! Am I Normal Yet by Holly Bourne slammed me to the ground with all the feels. It broke my heart, made me roar with laughter, made me determined to fight more about feminist issues and most of all enlightened me about OCD. After reading Am I Normal Yet, the first thing that came to my mind was: ”I have to get the second book ASAP!!!❤️❤️❤️”

but there were so many fantastic undertones of feminism and friendship and it was really really beautiful Because now people use the phrase OCD to describe minor personality quirks. "Oooh, I like my pens in a line, I'm so OCD."it made you see her reasoning behind her actions and instead of just calling it 'irrational,' the reader gets to see what compulsive force is pushing her to obsess This story missed the mark for me a bit because of too many side characters and it was just too meta. Too ironic. The characters know that they shouldn't be obsessing over boys so much, but they do anyway. I mean they literally discuss in the narrative that they should not be doing this while complaining boys are trash. The humor I think is known as "British humor" and it's kinda close to my type of humor, but not really. The humor added a very distinct tone to this story that I've never seen in any other book. I did get a very interesting message out of this story. This topic is also well discussed in the story - what the word “normal” implies and its consequences. So this book is pretty different from the mental health contemporaries I had read previously because it's split evenly between a story about romance/boy troubles and Evie's OCD. They are intertwined together and combined with a message on feminism.

That doesn't mean I can't see the wonderful message or the beautiful aspect of having friends, it just doesn't work for me anymore. I wanted to love this book, and although there was so much I did love, there were also parts that had me wanting to pull my hair out. Am I Normal Yet? is a very good book and I loved it. I loved seeing myself represented and it will definitely help me when it comes to my anxiety and OCDs. However, I wish the feminism talked about in this book was intersectional and didn’t exclude anyone, nor made anyone feel bad for talking about men. Yes, women are more than just lovers, mothers or wives, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to shade someone else for liking another person or even dating. Judging is never the key, and your feminism should always include everyone in it.

While reading, I was thinking that this book aces the Bechdel test (girls taking about things other than boys). So I was amused and delighted to see that it was also IN the book as a topic of conversation. Unfourtantly, there were also comments and parts that I felt contradicted the whole message of the book. i was really worried where it was headed but towards the end, i began to appreciate how the author played it out bc it made it have a much greater impact