Book review: Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

Usborne Publishing, 2015

Is it a good idea to go off medication? Probably not. Would about when you’re trying something new? Especially not. For the sixteen-year-old protagonist in this YA novel, Evie, like most of us, just wants to be normal as she’s starting off new at school. Left behind is the label of the “girl who went crazy.” Nobody at her new school knows about her diagnosis of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). So she’s making friends, going to parties, and thinking about a relationship. But if she can’t even open up to her friends about her diagnosis, how can she be in a relationship?

As an OCD sufferer myself, I found this YA novel comforting and relatable in the fact that I’m not alone. But the downside is my obsessions and compulsions got intertwined with those Evie experiences. So, this book has a trigger warning. All in all, it should help non-sufferers to experience what people like Evie and I go through daily. It’s openness about mental health issues is refreshing but with this illness in particular society has gone too far in taking it on as a typical characteristic by saying things like “I’m so OCD because I have to have my desk a certain way.” Doing so minimizes how severe and debilitating OCD actually is.

This tearjerker of a book takes you into the character’s mind at her most difficult times. We get to experience if only momentarily, the “bad thoughts” that Evie dwells on as well as the occasional “good thought.” We know what Evie really thinks about a situation and how she deals with it, which really makes one ruminate. And lastly, this book doesn’t play up mental illness or relationships as the be all end all well of happiness and jubilation. It is more realistic.