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

Book Review: 'My Name is Lucy Barton' by Elizabeth Strout

I finished this book a fortnight ago, but just getting round to finally reviewing it. It's really quite a short book, so didn't take me too long to read. I bought it over the summer in my frenzy of book buying, because I had seen it on display a lot, the blurb sounded good, and it is a really beautiful book to pick up, with lovely thick cream paper and understated yet striking cover, not to mention the perfect book smell (ok, I'm gonna stop the weirdness and move on!).

Brief Summary: Lucy Barton is a married mum of two young girls, who is in hospital in New York following a major surgery. One day, she waked to see her mother by her bedside. The mother she has not seen in many years. As the pair chat and story tell, Lucy recollects her rural childhood of poverty, and the quirky little details that brought her to where she is now and, later on, beyond.

Other than the hospital setting and the introduction of the mother, there isn't exactly a plot to this book. Rather, it's a reflective collection of tales from the narrative viewpoint of the central character, Lucy. While many of the details to which Strout includes (and often gives a lot of space to) may, on their own, appear to be a bit trivial or small,  each contributes to this wonderful truthful story which really makes you feel the emotions of the narrator, and, for me, brought a real element of nostalgia out.

In fact, towards the end of the book, I really regretted sitting reading it in public, because the combination of these emotional family tales and being away from home had me a bit choked up!

This is a short review, because it's a short book and I didn't really have anything about it that I didn't like. I really urge all of you to pick up a copy. Not a long read but well worth it. Truly beautiful writing.




Reading Challenge: 15/21

Film Review: Everything Everything

I imagine this will be a short review, as its now been 6 weeks since my friend and I went to see this!! But those of you who read my review of this book (available here) earlier in the summer will know that I really enjoyed it and was keen to see the film when it was available in the UK.

I was a bit confused by the release date, as I think it was pushed back from June to August, and the film wasn't being shown in many cinemas. However, we opted for this over Dunkirk (opinions? Did we make a bad choice missing that?) as we were more in the mood for a romantic drama than a war film! Like little kids, we stocked up on CandyKing and took our seats.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this film, considering it was such a short book. It didn't really strike me as the type to make for an action-packed film. I won't bother with a 'brief summary' as there's one in my book review post, and the film stuck fairly accurately to the story.

Actually, despite being a low-action film, they had in fact added to the plot to bulk it up a bit! It was interesting to chat to my friend about it afterwards, as the book was still fairly fresh for me, whereas she had never read it.

I thought the acting was really good, I particularly liked Amandla Stenberg as Maddie and Nick Robinson as Olly.

I felt as though the story portrayed very truthfully the awkwardness of growing up and painted an accurate image of 'coming of age', however my friend felt the plot was a bit far-fetched, as she prefers to be able to believe that the events would happen in real life, and to be honest I didn't totally disagree with her. I certainly noticed a kind of 'airbrushed' effect throughout the film, whereby every scene looked like it had been filtered! I'm not sure if this was deliberate, due to the insanely clean life Maddie must live or the dream-like quality of the events that occur, but it was a bit odd and made it hard to feel fully immersed in the lives of the characters.

Overall, I thought the film was a good reflection of the book and a nice film for a Sunday late-evening with my bestie, but possibly wouldn't make my list of favourite films.

Book Review: 'One Of Us Is Lying' by Karen McManus

I thought I'd take a quick study break this afternoon and finish up my back-log of book reviews with this great wee book One of Us Is Lying.

I had seen this book around social media a lot recently, and also on a friend's 'to be read' shelf, and I knew it had lovely red edges haha! So, when doing my first ever order from the wonderful site which is Book Depository (go check it out here - discounted prices on a huge range of books and free shipping worldwide! Best discovery of my summer!), alongside the Ravenclaw 20th Anniversary edition of the first Harry potter and a brand new copy of my all-time favourite classic Little Women, I added a copy to my basket!

I started this book just before I left for holiday and then took it with me and read it by the pool and on the beach. I thought the concept was great, and reminded me, on reading the blurb, of The Breakfast Club (a film which the previously mentioned friend showed me for the first time over the summer), and later revealed itself, at least in my eyes, to also draw on the kind of themes of Gossip Girl.

Brief Summary: 5 completely different pupils are in detention, after being caught with phones in class. Phones which are not theirs, and which they were unaware had been planted in their bags. When one of the students, Simon, has a fatal allergic reaction, the other 4 suddenly find themselves right in the middle of a murder investigation, and desperately attempt to stop the many secrets about them from coming out. Secrets that Simon knew and was going to publish on his gossip blog, giving each of them a motive for shutting him up for good.

The book goes on to explore how this situation affects each of the students, switching narratives between them, how it brings them together, shoves them apart, and changes who they are as people, their private lives, their priorities and the various relationships in their lives.

The 'criminal' aspect is interesting and makes for a good plot foundation. I did unfortunately guess the ending before it occurred (there were only so many suspects!), however, I didn't feel as though this reduced from the quality of the book as, for me, it wasn't so much about the mystery and more about the character dynamics.

I particularly liked the relationship between bad-boy Nate, and geek-girl Bronwyn, as it really emphasised how people's lives can be nothing like what they seem on the surface and we never really know people until we try to, but to be honest this was true of all of the characters and the secrets that tormented them.

Overall, this is a pretty quick and thoroughly enjoyable read which I think really stands out as something a bit different from your usual YA reads. Highly recommended!



Reading Challenge: 14/21

Book Review: 'Wilde Like Me' by Louise Pentland

I feel as though my blog is getting a bit samey and boring because all I seem to write these days are reviews, so I apologise about that! The reason is the reading challenge that I set myself at the start of the year, and the fact that I have really enjoyed spending my free time reading for pleasure more. Maybe I'll do Blogmas again this year to make up for it!

Anyway, Louise Pentland (Also known online as SprinkeOfGlitter) is one of the many Youtubers whose channel I dip in and out of, as in I watch the odd video but I don't follow or watch everything. I knew she was releasing her first fiction book, and it sounded good. But I hadn't thought much of it until the day before publication day when I saw that it was reduced to something like £5 on Amazon, and I couldn't resist treating myself to a gorgeous new hardback!

Once again, I finished this about a month ago, but haven't got round to posting until now.

Brief Summary: Robin is a single mum with a young daughter, Lyla, who has recently started at private school. As Robin's career finally begins to take off after lots of hard work, and the loneliness of single life starts creeping in too, Robyn struggles to keep her life on track and particularly with the never-ending Mum Guilt!

I liked how down-to earth this book was, particularly the day-to-day happenings of family life.

It was a really nice story and you really felt like you knew the characters and wanted the best for them.

However, overall I thought the book was overly descriptive and lacking in terms of plot. There isn't much action or drama in the story, there are several sub-storylines that could become climactic but none really do. Instead, Pentland focuses on greatly detailed descriptions of things which personally I don't feel as though needed quite so many words dedicated to them! I began to get a bit sick of reading about Robin's man-woes and day-to-day household chores and actually found her a little self-centred as a character (which, to be fair, was probably deliberate as the story is meant to be about a woman allowing herself to sometimes put herself first in life, which I do appreciate).

So, to sum up, a really lovely read, perfect for taking on holiday or something, but not personally my favourite read this year!

Catriona x




Reading Challenge: 13/21

Book Review: 'I'll Give You The Sun' by Jandy Nelson

When I was younger (I can't remember how old exactly, but maybe 12 or 13?), my mum bought me a book for Christmas called 'The Sky is Everywhere'. I think she had read a review of it as a good YA book in the Guardian or somewhere. I absolutely loved it, but no one I spoke to had ever heard of it, and so I spent several years telling everyone it was my favourite book (and rereading it many times!).

You can imagine my excitement then, when in early 2015, I realised that the author had actually written another book: 'I'll Give You The Sun'. I bought my copy and began reading it at the end of summer 2015. However, I wasn't very far through when I began university in September 2015, and the book was quickly forgotten.

In the 2 years that followed, I read many other books, and the author became extremely popular when 'The Sky Is Everywhere' was selected for the Zoella book club. I'm, glad that her fantastic talent started getting recognised, but I must admit I was a little disappointed that the book was no longer my own personal discovery!

Anyway, this summer I decided that enough was enough. My copy of 'I'll Give You The Sun', once beautiful with spray painted page edges and everything, was pretty tattered from being carried to many places and never read. So I decided to start again from the beginning and finally read it (although I finished it a while ago... starting back at uni has left me with a bit of a back-log of reviews to get through!).

It took me a wee while to get into, but I quickly fell in love once again with Nelson's style. It's so real, like you truly believe what her characters are feeling.

Brief Summary:  Noah and Jude are twin brother and sister who have always been inseparable, bound by their linked minds and wonderful imaginations. However, when things begin to turn sour between their parents, they drift apart too, and when tragedy hits the family, the two are broken apart. But as they grow apart, grow up, and learn who they are and what the need in life, they realise that all that's keeping them apart are the secrets they've been too afraid to share.

One issue with the book was a lack of chapters (instead, the narrative switched between Jude and Noah at various ages, in order to flip back in forward in proceedings. This was done well, and wasn't too confusing, but didn't allow the book to be split in to small, readable chunks.) However, I did like the variety in narrative, and the cleverness of the plot that failed to reveal what the two characters secrets were too quickly.

The story was complex enough to keep it interesting, but simple enough to follow, and each character was beautifully painted with a back story that helped you feel as though you knew them.

One of the thematic elements was ghosts, and fate, and other spiritual things that I can't day I particularly believe in. However, Nelson was not to heavy-handed in her inclusion of these ideas, and used them simply to shape her characters, rather than to prop up the plot. Therefore I found I could perfectly relate to the desires of the young twins for approval, acceptance, love, strong familial bond, etc.

I could gush about Nelson's amazing descriptive capabilities for ever, but I will simply highlight the opening scene. Discussing a 'coming of age' topic such as bullying is not uncommon among YA authors, but the image Nelson paints is so powerful.

Other issues addressed include pressures surrounding virginity, keeping secrets and telling lies, stereotyping of gender characteristics, mental health conditions/depression, sibling rivalry, suicidal thoughts, alcoholism, and fear over sharing one's sexuality with friends and family (closeting oneself, for want of a better phrase). No one of these is so explicitly stated as to become the centre focus of the novel, but integrated in a way which portrays the darkness that really can be seen in every day life when unsubstantial support is visible, to people of all ages but particularly teens who have experienced trauma or grief. I could talk more about how Nelson addresses each, but I don't have all day and I really would encourage you to read this book for yourself!

Although 'The Sky is Everywhere' will forever remain my favourite, this book is another triumph in YA literature and well worth a read.



Reading Challenge: 12/21