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