Review: The Manifesto on How to be Interesting by Holly Bourne

Edition: Paperback – Borrowed
Published by: Usbourne, 1st August 2014
Genre: Contemporary, Health, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Young Adult
Rating: 3 stars
Completed: 29th October 2015

Apparently I’m boring. A nobody. But that’s all about to change. Because I am starting a project. Here. Now. For myself. And if you want to come along for the ride then you’re very welcome.

Bree is a loser, a wannabe author who hides behind words. Most of the time she hates her life, her school, her never-there parents. So she writes.

But when she’s told she needs to start living a life worth writing about, The Manifesto on How to Be Interesting is born. Six steps on how to be interesting. Six steps that will see her infiltrate the popular set, fall in love with someone forbidden and make the biggest mistake of her life.

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It’s been a while since I’ve read this, so I’m going to try and sum up my thoughts on it.

The Manifesto on How to be Interesting is about seventeen year old Bree who wants to become an author but is rejected several times for her novel. At school, she only has one close friend, Holdo, in which they hang out and watch films. She knows that she is a good writer and doesn’t understand why she keeps getting rejected by publishers, so goes to her teacher whom she has a big crush on for advice. He tells her that her novel needs to be ‘interesting.’ As a result decides take matters in her own hands and decides to create an experiment on how to become more popular, thus the book title is the name of her blog.

Review: Night Owls (The Anatomical Shape Of A Heart) by Jenn Bennett

Edition: Paperback, 272 pages
Published by: Simon & Shuster UK, 13th August 2015
Genre: Art, Contemporary, Mental Health, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Young Adult
Rating: 3.5 stars

Feeling alive is always worth the risk.

Meeting Jack on the Owl—San Francisco’s night bus—turns Beatrix’s world upside down. Jack is charming, wildly attractive…and possibly one of San Francisco’s most notorious graffiti artists.

But Jack is hiding a piece of himself. On midnight rides and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who this enigmatic boy really is.

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First of all, I just need a moment to be a bit shallow and gush on how much I love this book cover. I saw it in Waterstones and I was drawn to the beautiful embossed gold typography and in the background you can see the map of San Francisco outlined in gold also! It is a very well designed cover. First thing I did was scanned it into Goodreads because I needed to know if it’s any good because a pretty cover does not necessarily mean a good book (in my experience). A lot of people seemed to like it, so I had to check it out myself and here I am!

If you are from the U.S the title for Night Owls is actually called The Anatomical Shape Of A Heart. I have no idea why. I recommend getting the UK edition.

Review: Made You Up by Francesca Zappia

Edition: E-Book, 428 pages
Published by: Greenwillow Books, 19th May 2015
Genre: Contemporary, Mental Health, Pyschology, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Young Adult
Rating: 2.5 stars

Reality, it turns out, is often not what you perceive it to be—sometimes, there really is someone out to get you. For fans of Silver Linings Playbook and Liar, this thought-provoking debut tells the story of Alex, a high school senior—and the ultimate unreliable narrator—unable to tell the difference between real life and delusion.

Alex fights a daily battle to figure out what is real and what is not. Armed with a take-no-prisoners attitude, her camera, a Magic 8 Ball, and her only ally (her little sister), Alex wages a war against her schizophrenia, determined to stay sane long enough to get into college. She’s pretty optimistic about her chances until she runs into Miles. Didn’t she imagine him? Before she knows it, Alex is making friends, going to parties, falling in love, and experiencing all the usual rites of passage for teenagers. But Alex is used to being crazy. She’s not prepared for normal. Can she trust herself? Can we trust her?

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MY THOUGHTS:

The story opens with Alex, as a seven year old at a supermarket and she meets a boy whom she calls ‘Blue Eyes.’ They find a tank full of lobsters. At the time, Alex believes the lobsters are asking her to set them free and so she does so with the help of Blue Eyes. However Alex then realises the boy she met was not real after all.

“People say teenagers think they’re immortal, and I agree with that. But I think there’s a difference between thinking you’re immortal and knowing you can survive. Thinking you’re immortal leads to arrogance, thinking you deserve the best. Surviving means having the worst thrown at you and being able to continue on despite that. It means striving for what you want most, even when it seems our of your reach, even when everything is working against you.”

Book Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Edition: E-Book, 300 pages
Published by: Penguin Books, 8th Jan 2015
Genre: Contemporary, Mental Health, Realistic Fiction, Romance, Young Adult
Rating: A whooping 5 stars!

Summary courtesy of Goodreads:

Theodore Finch is fascinated by death, and he constantly thinks of ways he might kill himself. But each time, something good, no matter how small, stops him.

Violet Markey lives for the future, counting the days until graduation, when she can escape her Indiana town and her aching grief in the wake of her sister’s recent death.

When Finch and Violet meet on the ledge of the bell tower at school, it’s unclear who saves whom. And when they pair up on a project to discover the “natural wonders” of their state, both Finch and Violet make more important discoveries: It’s only with Violet that Finch can be himself—a weird, funny, live-out-loud guy who’s not such a freak after all. And it’s only with Finch that Violet can forget to count away the days and start living them. But as Violet’s world grows, Finch’s begins to shrink.