Book Review: It Only Happens in the Movies by Holly Bourne

Book Review: It Only Happens in the Movies by Holly Bourne

Saturday, 31 March 2018

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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

Book Review: Miss You by Kate Eberlen

Book Review: Miss You by Kate Eberlen

Sunday, 16 July 2017

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Opening the front door to book post from the postman is my absolute favourite thing to do. Opening the front door to UNEXPECTED book post is even better. I was treated to a copy of   Miss You by Kate Eberlen, all packaged up and delivered to my door on publication day by Mantle at Pan Macmillan and I absolutely loved falling in love with Gus and Tess and their delightful tale. The cover claims that lovers of One Day by David Nicholls will find themselves equally pleased and I commend the comparison. I loved One Day and I loved Miss You. Arguably, equally as much. Here’s why.

Miss You takes the love story behind One Day- boy and girl meet, boy and girl fall in love but are kept apart by fate and other tragic circumstances- and twists it completely on its side. Boy and girl meet- albeit incredibly briefly- and then, for the rest of the tale, live their lives separately, neither of the two aware that their meeting one another properly has been stopped by some greater force. Gus and Tess meet briefly whilst holidaying, separately, in Italy when they are teenagers. Their conversation lasts all of seconds, and neither of them thinks much of the other. Over the course of the next 16 years – the duration of the novel- the two characters continue to brush past one another without officially ‘meeting’ one another properly.

Each of the two characters falls in love, has life experiences, suffers loss, completely independently of the other. We follow Tess as she loses her mother to cancer and puts her plans to go to university to one side to take care of her younger sibling, contrasting with Gus who attends medical school to please his parents who are still mourning the son they lost to a skiing accident. We see Gus marry and have children. We watch as Tess’s relationship with her sister unfolds. Two separate stories which you find yourself willing to come together as one. Of course, the two characters DO eventually meet one another, but I’ll leave it to you to discover how and when, and what comes of this inevitable meeting.

I absolutely LOVED this story. I hadn’t heard much about it prior to receiving my copy of the book so I went into it with absolutely no expectations at all. I devoured every page, feeling all sorts of emotions for the characters. I loved both Gus and Tess’s chapters equally, which is quite unusual for me. I normally find myself more attached to a single character, so to speed through both character’s chapters with no qualms is indeed quite rare. I saw a little old lady reading this on the bus and was quick to let her know just how good the story is (she was enjoying it a lot) and I’ll definitely be passing my copy on to my mum at the next possibility. I’m really, really excited to see what Kate Eberlen comes up with next. A writer to keep an eye on, for sure.