A review by wjreadsbooks
Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

4.0

I kinda put Am I Normal Yet on my TBR on a whim, especially since the ratings are so high on Goodreads. And I'm really glad I did because it's a funny, heartwarming story about a Evie, a girl with OCD who just desperately wants to be a normal teenage girl. Evie is sixteen and at college, about to do her GCSEs but she's had to grapple with her OCD, which had been so totally out of control that she'd basically dropped off the face of the earth for a while. When she returned, her best friend no longer seemed to have time for her and her old friends have become distant. This year, all Evie wants to do is for life to be "normal" and to find a guy worth dating. In between her adventures navigating her relationships, she befriends two other girls Lottie and Amber.

The book also deals with some pretty heavy topics of how having OCD and being mental unwell is like:

These words - words like OCD and bipolar - are not words to use lightly. And yet, they're everywhere. There are TV programmes that actually pun on them. People smile and use them, proud of themselves for learning them, like they should get a sticker or something. Not realizing that if those words are said to you by a medical health professional, as a diagnosis of something you'll probably have for ever, they're words you don't appreciate being misused every single day by someone who likes to keep their house quite clean.

But it does so with so much humour and warmth, as Evie gradually learns that fitting in doesn't mean that she has to hide the person that she truly is.

Spoiler

The book also explores how difficult navigating life with OCD can be, and how tired Evie can feel about the prospect of having to manage her OCD for the rest of her life. The downward spiral that Evie gets caught up in was also quite scary to read about, because you can see it coming but also understand why she's unable to stop herself or to acknowledge that she needs help.

And I also thought that the author did a great job in explaining the Bechdel test and its history, which even I didn't really know about, in a way that doesn't talk down to its readers:

"Have you really not heard of it? I thought you would've done it in film studies. It's like a feminism litmus test for films and books and stuff. Basically, in the eighties, this super cool illustrator who I LOVE called Alison Bechdel realized that all female characters do in fiction stuff like films and books, is talk about men. So she made this simple Bechdel test. And, to pass it, a film's got to have at least two men in it -"

Lottie butted in. "And they've got to have at least one conversation about something other than men. Just one conversation, that's it. And it's passed."

"Oooooh, okay." I thought through all the hundreds, possibly thousands, of films I'd watched, thinking it would be easy. Two minutes later, I had nothing.