Am I Normal Yet? (The Spinster Club Series #1)

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Now, I've never had any interaction with OCD, so please correct me if I offend anyone - I really don't mean to. I knew if this was anything like "Yearbook", then Holly would talk about some serious issue here too but in a manner which doesn't make the setting too depressing yet at the same time deliver a powerful message. I loved how Evie and her friends were just getting started on their journey into feminism and so they were each at different stages and continued to learn as they went along. No empiezan (ni terminan, ya de paso) haciéndolo todo bien o tomando siempre las decisiones correctas. Evie’s fear of relapse and her burning desire to be “normal” drives the whole plot, of course, and what’s interesting is what Bourne does with that.

With all the boys, the drama and the mental health issues, Evie had a lot to handle and I felt like I was right there with her. Plus, they often make each other feel bad for talking about men, as if dating one was against feminism. This book is really important as it talks about very important subjects that should be discussed more in the YA literature. This wasn't her first seizure (that had been when I was 10), but it was the one that started the beginning of her epilepsy. Plus, Evie talked a lot about all the stigma around mental health and all I could do was scream "HELL YES" while reading it.Overall I'm in love with this book and it tipped my TBR over the edge, as I now need to read all the Holly Bourne books. I like the offset “bad” and “good” thoughts, though I confess I wasn’t a huge fan of Evie’s bubbliness at the beginning of the book, and I’m a little curmudgeonly about this trend of SHOUTING AT THE READER when we have perfectly good italics to get the job done.

Another huge theme in the book is feminism and what that means to teenage girls in this day and age. I’m also very happy with the anxiety and OCDs representation, which I found to be perfect and I never read a review saying the contrary. She meets her therapist once a week, finally cuts her worries list down to a single page, and is lowering her medication for OCD and anxiety. I really enjoyed the style this book is written in, though it's very Young Adult which won't appeal to everyone. It wasn't hushed up like it was a bad thing; rather, it was explained in a clear way, and shown that while it can be painful and heartbreaking to sufferers and their families, there are various methods to deal with it.

People smile and use them, proud of themselves for learning them, like they should get a sticker or something. I rightly should have started with her earliest works, but I couldn’t resist this first book of the Spinster Club trilogy. Glücklicherweise sind ihre beiden Freundinnen aus dem Spinster-Club, Amber und Lottie, immer für sie da.

Yes, women are more than just lovers, mothers or wives, but it doesn’t give anyone the right to shade someone else for liking another person or even dating. Auch die Feminismus-Thematik, der sich die 3 Mädels in ihrem Spinster-Club widmen, fand ich super spannend und zum Nachdenken anregend.Primarily aimed at teenagers, this book covers all the usual topics we would associate with a young adult novel: alcohol, sex and relationships, to name but a few. This gives the reader an insight into her recovery process as well as what support is available to mental health suffers. Being a spinster means not altering who you are, what you believe in, and what you want just because it makes a boy’s life easier.