Saturday 24 December 2016

Finding Audrey by: Sophie Kinsella

Genre: Young Adult Fiction, Contemporary
Published: June 9, 2015 by: Delacorte Books
Pages: 286
Rating: 5/5 stars



Audrey suffers from a severe anxiety disorder that disruptes her everyday life. She has quit school and is focusing on making progress with her therapist, Dr. Sarah. However when her brother's new friend starts showing up at the house, she becomes intrigued in him. She wants to talk to him, she wants to know him, she just doesn't know how. With the help of her family, therapist, and herself, Audrey starts to fight her mental illness, to start living the life she thought she'd never know.

FINALLY! A mental illness book that has romance but does not have the boy "cure" the person's illness! This book was such a breath air from the mental illness books we usually see, because it involves a person taking control of their own life and not having their crush fix it for them. I loved this book!

I kind of liked how this book wasn't dark and heavy. I think with a lot of anxiety books it's very dark, emotional and such, and this was kind of light-hearted. There was sort of a tasteful wittiness to it that showed that Audrey was still very much a normal teenager at heart, she just needed some help getting there. This book was a very easy read.

I liked how this book was real. It didn't portray romance as the curer of the anxiety, it focused on Audrey getting the help she needs to build up that romance. It showed the impacts of her anxiety on all factors, such as herself, her family, her friends and even her therapist. I think this was a book that a lot could relate to as it shows that it takes a village of kind, caring people to help someone.

This book also shows some stigma of mental illnesses, such as the reactions of the people Audrey used to go to school with. I really liked those parts because it shows how much ignorance there still is in the world when it comes to these issues and how we really need to combat them.

Overall, a really amazing book that I think everyone should read. Whether you have a mental illness and need a motivator, or you don't but want to learn more, this book was amazing in every sense.

Have you read Finding Audrey? What did you think?

Emily @ Paperback Princess

11 comments:

  1. Sounds interesting! (And thank God this avoids the romance-as-cure trope!)

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  2. Glad you liked it Emily. :) I actually found this book to be one of those YA novels that showcase romance as the healer of mental illness, especially when her anxiety slowly dissipated when she began to like Linus. I don't know, that's how I personally viewed it :/ But nonetheless, I like how you find this book and I'm really happy that you liked it! I love reading about mental illnesses in novels, so I'm glad that this book is one of them :)

    Jillian @ Jillian's Books

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    1. Thanks Jillian! Idk to me I found that her therapist and her family played a bigger role than Linus. But I guess it all depends on how you view it! :)

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  3. I want to read this so bad!! I keep hearing amazing reviews!

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  4. I just added this book to my TBR list. Great review, Emily.
    New Bloglovin follower

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  5. This looks really good and definitely like something I'd appreciate. Great review :) And I certainly like the idea of the no-romance cure!

    Btw, (sorry for the random question) how did you make your page tabs curved/rounded? Did you use a particular CSS? Thanks! I was just wondering cos I can't seem to find a way to do it anywhere :( And I want to do it for my blog.

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    1. It was really good! Actually those tabs were the default when I made my pages. I didn't have to do anything, it just came with the blogger template that I used, which is the ethereal template. Hope that helps :)

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    2. Oh I see:) Thanks!

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  6. AHHHH I"M SO GLAD YOU GOT AROUND TO READING THIS, EM!!! I really, really loved it and I'm so glad I did because Sophie Kinsella is one of my most favorite authors ever! I was quite wary because this was her first attempt at YA, but it was just wonderful <3

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    1. I know!! I've never read anything by her before and I was so impressed!

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