2018 is flying by and my
Goodreads reading challenge looks light years away from achievable! In an
effort to properly wind down after a long day at work, I’ve been trying to
switch off from technology, turn off my computer, stop planning and stop
THINKING about work at 9pm every night- my go-to alternative has, of course,
been to read a book and my latest read was the result of this new system I’ve
started up. So far, I’ve found myself feeling less tired and also less stressed,
so I think this wind-down time is really benefitting me.
For Christmas my younger brother
bought me a few books, one of those being It
Only Happens in the Movies by Holly
Bourne. I’ve never read anything by Holly Bourne before, but a friend of
mine had it on her to-read pile and it stood at to me as being something I
might enjoy. I’m a bit of a sucker for cheesy YA fiction and this one seemed
like it’d be right up my street. I got stuck into it one evening and an hour
later, 110 pages in, I was well and truly hooked.
Named after Audrey Hepburn and
raised on her parents’ love story, Audrey, our protagonist’s feelings towards
love have turned sour. Newly cynical after falling victim to heartbreak and her
parents’ divorce, the story follows Audrey as she starts a new job at her local
cinema and attempts to write her A Level Media Studies Extended Essay on the
representation of romance in romcoms. Naturally, Audrey finds herself working
alongside a man who will likely change her entire perception of love- Harry, an
aspiring film director and all round bad boy with a bad reputation for messing
girls around. After being warned by multiple people- including her brother-
that Harry is no good, can she resist
his advances and stop herself falling head over heels for seemingly the wrong
guy? Including a gore filled Zombie movie, a wonderful best friend and the
biggest and most serious choice a person may have to make in a relationship,
this book is everything that I needed to fill that little gap in YA fiction
filled heart.
It’s fair to say that I really
enjoyed this book – it was incredibly fast paced and I got through it very
quickly. I enjoy this about a book – it’s nice to sit down and whizz through a
story, knowing that you’re enjoying it and it’s not an absolute chore to read.
The characters were incredibly likeable although I do think that the
relationship between Audrey’s brother and her mum should have been explored in
a little bit more detail – I felt as though there was a depth that was lacking
slightly here and knowing more about her brother and his situation would have rectified
this. Audrey standing up to her dad was a particularly momentous moment and I
felt myself swelling with pride a little bit here. The book focused on
real-life relationships and emphasised the fact that actually, real life and
real love doesn’t flow as easily as it does in the movies and there’s much more
to life than a fairy tale romance. The ending could have gone one of two ways
and I’m really happy that it ended the way it did – it was the right ending and
showed just how well Audrey and her character had developed over the course of
the story.
I’ll be looking out for more
books by Holly Bourne and getting stuck into them soon, without a doubt. A
lovely, cute-sy read that made me warm inside.
4/5
