A Mature Debut...

Throughout this week, I had decided that I wanted to try out the 19 year old writer, which has been the talk of literature world, during the last month. Obviously, when I did begin to read it, I did have high expectations- when lots of readers have commented it to be good. This was from Goodreads reviews on how they had thought about it. But also the fact that she was on the breakfast news was one of the main reasons on why i decided to tryout her story. Usually, when it came to unknown writers talking about their books on breakfast TV, i would normally forget it and pass it off to be awful. Although when i saw the cover and the blurb, i was very intrigued, intrigued with the fact that i could relate to these experiences in some cases- it makes sense when you're a teenager!

Genre: Contemporary
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year of Publish: 2014

As it being a debut novel for Alice Oseman, it was very developed compared to some writers on first publishing. It considers issues such as self-harm, homophobia and teenage carelessness. The whole plot is centred around a particular year 12 student called Tori Spring, who is a chronic pessimist. During the book she meets a guy in year 13 called Michael Holden- its definitely not a love story. The whole idea of maybe why the illustrator has included this upon the front, is to show this story is not about clichéd love, but about certain events that have happened to make Tori reevaluate her life.

My judgement towards the whole novel is that, the beginning was a little slow, but i forgive because of the fact that its a debut and over time her writing skills around this will develop. But I also loved the fact on how Tori's and Michael's relationship blossomed throughout the story. I must admit that i did smile sometimes, as it made Tori sometimes a bit happier, than being a usual slouch in life. The idea that both these characters are very similar when approaching life, it doesn't make you look back to how outside characters labelled Michael as a bit of a freak.

Overall, I like on how both of these characters begin to care to what is happening around them. But not only that, is is that no matter what problems they may be going through, they will never be alone as there are always people around who care about them no matter what. Finally, the fact that she is at university and has her own published book is incredible at this age. I'm sure most people around the same age would only begin to think about where they want to head next in life. I found it hard to rate this book through many factors, but after a while I had finally decided that I give it 3.5 stars.

Alice Oseman's Blog

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