The fact that it is just a book that shows a teenage girl living life again highlights that OCD is a trait, it is not a person.

That should highlight to you that this isn’t just a little thing I feel: it’s a movement.Įvie and her companions all make for a typical teenage life (presented beautifully), and in a way Am I Normal Yet? is just that: it’s a teenage girl living life. That rant I had at the start? Holly had it too in the book under the guise of Evie. But the book utilises the cliché NHS therapeutic techniques and the whole good/bad thoughts to highlight the real issue of mental health and how people actually go about their day. To many they appear normal, and as though absolutely nothing is wrong at all with them. It’s a complex issue that not many people actually understand, and I’m so glad that Holly Bourne, like Emma Blackery said, “finally gets it!”Įvie as a character shows a real struggle that sufferers of OCD face every day.

In all honesty, I’m shocked by the depth and understanding of OCD. But she wants to have a normal boyfriend too. Go to normal college was one, and now she has Lottie and Amber – friends who won’t ditch you is another. And it’s about time too: she’s 16 and heading into college. Throughout her life she’s been on medication and in therapy for it, but now her dosage of medicine is falling and fast. So perhaps I judged the book a bit too quickly, but nonetheless it lived up to the expectations I set of it.Įvie has OCD. The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting was the second book I reviewed for this site and I loved it. But with Holly Bourne’s new book, Am I Normal Yet?, I judged it by the author a bit too quickly. Before I go on, if you are a culprit of that, I’d ask you to stop. Are you one of the people that will look at your pencil case, see how organised it is and say, “Wow, I’m so OCD!”? Or are you someone who gets scared by people playing harmless pranks and you say to that person who just performed that prank on you, “I had a panic attack when you did that!”? For a while now the stigma against mental health and the use of mental health conditions as adjectives has wound me up to the extreme, because it’s so offensive to people who have mental health conditions.

Am i normal yet