Review: How Hard Can Love Be?
07:00
How Hard Can Love Be?
By Holly Bourne
Series: Normal #2
Source: Waterstones
Format: Paperback
Page count: 480
Published: 1st February 2016
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance,
All Amber wants is a little bit of love. Her mum has never been the caring type, even before she moved to California, got remarried and had a personality transplant. But Amber's hoping that spending the summer with her can change all that.
And then there's prom king Kyle, the guy all the girls want. Can he really be interested in anti-cheerleader Amber? Even with best friends Evie and Lottie's advice, there's no escaping the fact: love is hard.
I’ve loved all of Holly Bourne’s books, so obviously I was really excited to read this book. I love Holly’s writing style, so one day when I wasn’t feeling too good, I thought I’d pick it up. 4 hours later, and I didn’t expect to have read it so quickly! It was the perfect spring read, and really made me excited for summer. It’s such a fun and quick read, yet still holds some important messages, which I adore!
There was nothing I didn’t love about this book, but my favourite aspect was Amber, the protagonist. I loved her in Am I Normal Yet?, the sequel and companion novel to this book, but I loved her so much more in this one. From the very first page, she was so funny, sarcastic, and fierce, yet was greatly flawed and had weaknesses too.
I was also really impressed with the way feminism was introduced in this book. I didn’t think the Spinster club would be able to meet as much - and Lottie and Evie weren’t in this book much - but there were still aspects of feminism. I think it’s so well done, and I’m really glad that the important issues will be introduced to readers who may not have known about ideas like this before.
I was surprised to find I loved the romance! It wasn’t complicated, and the love interest was such a lovely guy. Usually in contemporaries, I find the boyfriend is often a bit of an arse, but Kyle wasn’t like that at all. He respected Amber 100% (which I’m so here for), and was also a feminist!
The setting was so dreamy. In this book, Amber’s visiting her Mum in America, so the entire book is set in San Francisco. I’ve never visited America, but I’ve always wanted to, and this book makes me want to even more! It sounds so sunny and fun (such a change from England), so I hope that one day I’ll be able to visit!
I was really impressed with the family themes explored in this book. Like in every family, Amber’s relationship with her Mum and Step-Dad are complicated, but out of everything, the love they show for each other shone through, which made me so happy. Alcoholism is not explored in books often, and usually it’s not done very well, but in this one it was shown to not be the addict’s fault, which is an important lesson.
This book made me admire and adore Holly Bourne even more. She’s one of my favourite authors, and from following her on Twitter, she seems so cool. I can’t wait for the final installment of this series, and to read other books from her!
Hello! I'm D - a dog-loving feminist from the UK. You'll probably find me with my nose in a book or playing my clarinet
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