Review: It Only Happens In The Movies

Genre: YA romance

Published: 5th October 2017

Length: 305 pages

My rating: 7/10

Overview: Audrey begins a new job at her local cinema, where she catches the attention of local badboy Harry. In between recovering from her ex, dealing with her mum after her parent's divorce, and trying to juggle school and friendships, Audrey and Harry begin their romance. The bad boy and the good girl, it's nothing we haven't all heard before...right?

Where shall we start? I love Holly Bourne. I'm OBSESSED. As such, I had high expectations for this book. Although it definitely isn't my favourite book by her, it is still funny and enjoyable, albeit so stereotypical. But that's the point. The whole book is made of ever Hollywood romance stereotype you can think of. Every few chapters, another one is listed at the beginning of the chapter. These were:

-Good girl thinks she can change badboy

-The gay best friend

-Rich girl falls in love with lower class boy

-The two love interests conveniently bumping into each other at a random place

-Girl getting kissed in the rain

-The big date where he pulls out all the stops

-The montage section after the couple get together

-Having perfect sex where everyone orgasms

-The event they attend so boy can see girl in a DRESS

-Somebody fucks up so they get dumped

-The same person then makes a grand gesture and the story ends on them kissing or whatever

I'm not gonna lie, at first this really grated on me. It took a while for me to get invested in the story because the stereotypes, even if intentional, are really irritating. Let's pick one to talk about; the gay best friend. As far I as remember this is actually the first time we've had a proper gay character in a Holly Bourne book, and it was kinda disappointing. A gay drama kid who is camp and sassy. At one point, the main character even tells him to 'calm the gay down'. His boyfriend was normal, thank the gods, but honestly he's hardly in the book. I know all the stereotypes were intentional but PLEASE, speaking as an LGBTQ person myself here, could we have a gay character that is not either a)tortured and bullied or b)sassy and frivolous. Just saying.

Now let's talk main characters!

Audrey, whose POV the novel is told through, is not a believer in love. Her boyfriend dumped her a week after she lost her virginity, and her dad who had been in a fairytale romance with her mum for so many years is now married to another woman. She's bitter to say the least. At the start of the novel she was quite annoying, ignoring her old friends Alice, Becky, and Charlie (the ABC naming system is pretty prevalent here) and being wrapped up in her self pity. Her impatience with her mum is quite understandable though, and the situation they are in increases your pity towards her. As the novel continued she became more self confident and actually began to make good choices, and by the end I actually quite liked her. Everybody cheer for character development!

Harry, the badboy love interest. As soon as Audrey sees him, she says it's 'obvious that Harry had hints of fuckboy about him'. GIRL NO. STAY AWAY FROM THE FUCKBOY. To be fair to her, she holds out for a pretty long time. What I love, is that even with the stereotypes, Harry is non-white! I think! It's not properly confirmed, but Audrey guesses he's Asian so I'm just going to take it. He's charming, persistant, he smokes weed...everything a fuckboy should be. I actually quite liked Harry even though he was a fuckboy, especially when Audrey was kicking down his walls. He's not a bad guy, but he does make some bad choices. There were also some loose ends concerning Harry, such as LouLou (what a queen) telling Audrey she should find out the truth about his parents, which never happens.

One of the great points about this book is how open it is about sex. Whilst having sex for the first time with her ex Milo, he gets straight in with no foreplay, and Audrey's vagina just pretty much clamps up, causing her a lot of pain when he tries to do his thing. She talks about this later with her girlfriends and another one of them admits to feeling extreme pain whilst having sex too, causing her to be so concerned about it that she called a helpline. It was so awesome of Holly to show teenage girls through this book the importance of foreplay and the fact that they deserve to enjoy sex just as much as a guy. Also to any guys who read it that they need to focus not only on themselves during sex! Slightly unrelated but I also loved when Audrey went crazy at Harry for telling her she's not like other girls. That phrase needs to die. The thing I will always admire is how feminist Holly is. I love it!

Finally; the ending was awesome. The idea that it might happen flitted across my mind early on but I incorrectly disregarded it. It was fucking great and just improved the whole book for me. Mad respect to Holly Bourne.

Verdict: A funny if stereotypical romance that get's better as it progresses. Stick around until the end and your cynical side won't be disappointed.

Um so that was my first review! Let me know how it was and let me know if you read the book!

#hollybourne #review