Book Review: 'Nina Is Not Ok' by Shappi Khorsandi

Finally getting round to finishing my backlog of reviews! In August 2016, my friend and I had a great weekend at the Fringe in Edinburgh, and got tickets to see Comedian Shappi Khorsandi perform. I had never been to a live comedy performance before, and really enjoyed it! She was also selling copies of her fiction book, and signing them. It was one of those cases of being so caught up in the show that we both bought copies! Carried it around Edinburgh and then home in our one rucksack each.... but I only got round to reading it a couple of weeks ago!

I spent a couple of days at my Gran's house during reading week, and decided to ditch the uni work while I was there and read something for pleasure instead! Luckily, as soon as I started this I was hooked by the story. I love Shappi's writing style, it's really easy to read without being overly cheesy or descriptive... like enough happens to keep your interest, but you also feel invested in the characters.

Brief summary: Nina is a 17 year old girl living with her Mum, Step-dad and half sister. Her father died when she was young, from excessive alcohol consumption. She was recently dumped by her first boyfriend and finds herself spiralling out of control... regularly getting too drunk to remember the embarrassing and dangerous things she's done. The story is about how Nina begins to admit she has a problem and, despite facing a number of challenges throughout the book, eventually begins to see a road to recovery. 

Obviously, not being an alcoholic meant I couldn't literally relate, however I am a young person wth a somewhat addictive personality, and I found that there were other ways in which I related to Nina's character too: the rocky relationship with her mum at her age; the cycle of binge and regret;  finding it hard to accept advise and admit defeat; and the realisation of actually having to work hard to maintain grades.... I have never experienced any of these on the same scale, but it did help me to connect to the story.

I think that, while 'coming of age' stories can be a bit cliche, and all will be riddled with a few unrealistic and slightly too rose-tinted elements, this book does a fantastic job of taking an underrepresented aspect of life, and an extremely serious topic, and dealing it with it both informatively and maturely, but also in a style that made me want to weep one minute and burst with laughter the next.

Nina and her friends and family and her story  definitely struck a chord with me, and I absolutely devoured this book! Shappi Khorsandi is both a talented comedian and YA author! I  recommend giving it a go!







Reading Challenge: 17/21 

Book Review: 'The Drowning of Arthur Braxton' by Caroline Smailes

However, I did get really quite bored of this book half way through. I don't know why, but I just wasn't finding it very engaging, and I had no desire to pick it up. I took a break from it to read the last

I started this book on Kindle while on holiday in Greece in early September. I had heard it mentioned by a few different people, particularly Carrie Hope Fletcher (Youtuber, West End Actress, Author), and so had bought it on Kindle a while back.

It started off well, really odd but interesting. The book was split into sections from different perspectives, and began with the perspective of Laurel, a young girl who gets a job at a strange swimming baths, thought to be 'healing', where people would book appointments to be cleansed by the water and the healers who worked there. One of the men that works there develops an unhealthy obsession with her.

I was really enjoying Laurel's narrative and the interesting characterisation developed by Smailes, when the story jumped forward to the present day, to be narrated by Arthur, a young boy who's mum left him and dad is struggling with severe depression. He flunks school following serious bullying, and finds himself at the run down swimming baths, where he sees a strange collection of people, including a beautiful girl swimming naked in the pool.

One thing I immediately liked about this section was that Arthur's narrative was very colloquial. You really imagine being stuck in the head of a teenage boy, with his crass thoughts and panicky swearing and sexual tension.

book I reviewed and watch plenty Netflix, and so only actually got round to reading the second half in mid-October.

The 'big reveal' part of the book, when the reader learns how all the characters are connected, was partly predictable, and partly plain confusing. I don't want to say to much for fear of spoiling, but I will say this... I feel as though there was way more meaning intended in the writing of this book than I got out of it. This could be for a whole variety of factors: the broken way I read it; the fact I was back at uni and tired and distracted; or simply that it wasn't my kind of book.

That said, there were parts of the book I thought were really well written and tapped into very genuine emotions of loneliness, feeling lost and helpless, etc. Maybe in a few years I'll reread this book (or watch the film adaptation that I believe is in the works!) and see if I can get a better grasp on its meaning. The eerie characters really do stay with you, so I definitely think Smailes is a good writer, and that it was just unfortunate that I struggled to connect with this book.




Reading Challenge: 16/21