It Only Happens in the Movies

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And I really don’t think you can get away with hating your ex’s new girlfriend whilst hanging out with a guy you like and his ex girlfriend and being weird about her not being your biggest fan. This is not a spoiler free review because there is something that happens at the end that I find _very concerning_ and incredibly problematic. Audrey’s parents are also going through a divorce and Holly Bourne portrayed the conflicting feelings and raw emotions of that experience so well. Bourne acknowledges the complicated realities of being a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood, portrays all the stresses and obligations a young adult must weigh even as she tries to figure out her feelings about friends and lovers. Essentially, the story proves how almost every element of romantic movies is unrealistic through Audrey’s personal (firsthand and secondhand) experiences which she actually documents for her thesis.

It shows that the people you see at school, or at work, or in the street, aren’t actually what they seem; they could be a person trying to be something else, rather than just embracing who they are or someone unhappy in life and putting on a mask for others to see. She pegs her male coworker, Harry, as a “fuckboy” right off the bat—yet that doesn’t change the feelings she starts to develop as they bond over cinema. The novella-turned-novel all about Chaol on his journey to Antica in seek of help from the revered khagan there as well as the healing of his injury he sustained. I enjoyed not just how Audrey expresses her evolving feelings about this, but also how her family and friends react. But now her dad has left her mom for a younger model, including new kids, and that makes Audrey’s home life … stressed, to say the least.Audrey was a character who at first I really liked and I really wanted to see her development and growth but this just got so, so annoying that I couldn't really stand her after a while. There aren’t enough books set in UK high schools and sixth forms and I so enjoyed reading a book with a setting that I could relate to more than the typical US high school stories. With a superb display of actual true relationships in reality, Audrey shows us that what you see in movies is only half the truth.

Bad boys turned good, kisses in the rain, climbing through bedroom windows… It only happens in the movies.With all these stresses and complications, it’s no wonder Audrey looks at the canon of romantic comedies and finds her life wanting. I did finish the book because it was a very fast-paced read and I kept hoping it would get better (it didn't). I did this last year and it was such a good idea because we always remember the sadness or fixate on the bad so this is a really good way to remember the best of the year – there’s always so much you forget about! But as a character we’re positioned not to like, that’s kind of giving teenagers the thumbs up to be so disrespectful to adult women in their lives and to slut shame ‘The Other Woman’. A sequel novel, The Scarlet Veil, featuring vampires also released recently and I'm looking forward to checking it out.