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: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Book Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Monday, 29 August 2016

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“YOU DO NOT WRITE YOUR LIFE WITH WORDS...YOU WRITE IT WITH ACTIONS. WHAT YOU THINK IS NOT IMPORTANT. IT IS ONLY IMPORTANT WHAT YOU DO.”

― PATRICK NESS, A MONSTER CALLS

I love a good sob, whether it be through watching a sad movie or reading a sad book. A few weeks back, I was watching television nonchalantly, minding my own business. Suddenly, a film trailer started on the screen. 2 minutes later, I was in floods of tears. That film trailer was for the book to movie adaptation of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness.

I, like the majority of book lovers, prefer to read the book before going to the cinema to watch a film. I initially added the book to my ever growing reading list for a later date, but then saw that Sanne (booksandquills on youtube and twitter) had recommended it as a must read so I grabbed it straight away and got stuck right in. The book’s won countless awards and obviously, that must have been for a reason. Needless to say, I was right. I was informed by a number of my friends who had already read the book that I was set to sob my little heart out and I scoffed at them: yes, I cry at everything but this one is BLATANTLY OBVIOUSLY SAD. If I already know it’s sad, I can mentally prepare myself from the offset, right? Wrong.

I’m going to be pretty open with this review: I cried within about 2 pages of starting the book and then held it together right until the very end. I’ll get to the point straight away: I absolutely loved it. Everyone knows I love Young Adult fiction. I bleat on about this at every given opportunity. I’m not sure whether A Monster Calls falls directly into the YA genre or whether it’s aimed at younger readers, but either way it’s definitely one of the better books I’ve read in the last few months. There were certain scenes which were poignant and left me speechless- the scenes with Conor commenting on how the other children (and teachers!) changed in their treatment towards him after they found out about his mother were particularly sad, especially in his referencing being invisible. I found that these scenes choked me up before the actual sad things even happened.

The entire plot and the way it progressed was outstanding. I honestly feel like there’s nothing that I can say here that’ll truly give justice to this outstandingly beautiful story, but I also feel like I have to write SOMETHING, ANYTHING, to voice my thoughts and share this amazing tale. Ness’ language use is beyond amazing and I honestly can’t think of an author in the same genre that uses language as well as he does – his use of short sentences captures exactly the required mood and say so much more than their intended message. I was doing really well at holding myself together until pretty close to the end, before the letter from Lily arrives and finally, the absolute tear-jerker line:

“YOU BE AS ANGRY AS YOU NEED TO BE,” SHE SAID. “DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU OTHERWISE. NOT YOUR GRANDMA, NOT YOUR DAD, NO ONE. AND IF YOU NEED TO BREAK THINGS, THEN BY GOD, YOU BREAK THEM GOOD AND HARD.”

Beautifully written, poignant and heartbreaking in all the right ways. An absolute literary classic.

I absolutely cannot wait to see how this book is portrayed on the big screen. I hope to God that they’ve done it justice because it’d be absolutely heart-breaking if others didn’t get to enjoy this amazing gift to literature the way that I have.

5/5

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Goodreads: Why I Read YA Fiction

Goodreads: Why I Read YA Fiction

Thursday, 23 June 2016

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With the exception of psychological thrillers, the genre of books I read the most is without a doubt Young Adult fiction. I think my love for YA fiction began when I was much younger than a young adult, but then I always did read whatever I could get my hands on regardless of whether it was age appropriate (worst example of this being an 11-year-old me picking up and reading When the Wind Blows by James Patterson and giving myself nightmares for weeks afterwards…) I ploughed my way through Jacqueline Wilson, Louise Rennison, Ann Brashares and her Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants series. When I was a little bit older, I got into Sarah Dessen and her beautiful stories and hers are the ones that to this day I read over and over again. I went to Camp Half-Blood with Percy Jackson and Annabeth, Hogwarts with Harry Potter and the gang. I followed the unfortunate events which befell the Baudelaire siblings all the while developing a love for a genre of fiction that even to this day rests incredibly close to my heart.

I actually get quite offended when people say I’m too old to be reading Young Adult fiction. I get haughty when the staff in Waterstones give me weird looks when they see me perusing amongst the YA shelves. I am 22 years old. I’m far from being an “old” adult. I would say I am still a young adult. I’ve read articles which tell me that, as a 22-year-old, I should be embarrassed to be reading books intended for younger people, but I honestly don’t see how this is an issue. Quite frankly, even if I was an “older adult” I’d probably still read YA fiction. Young Adult fiction is beautiful in a way which contemporary adult fiction isn’t able to be. It’s important to generations worth of people, including my own and it is important in the sense that it makes me happy: and as far as I’m concerned, reading books which make me happy is the most important thing of all. I don’t read to appeal to other people’s expectations and I never will. 

I read for me and I read YA. 

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