How Hard Can Love Be? (The Spinster Club Series #2)

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I charged Amber with the crime of not being Evie at the beginning of this review. She’s guilty of it—but that’s a good thing, right? Nothing is worse than an author who can’t write characters with unique voices. So it’s good that Bourne can write more than one UK teenager. Obviously, since Amber doesn’t share Evie’s anxiety and compulsiveness, she is more whimsical in how she behaves. She drinks and generally gets up into mischief … yet, paradoxically, there is steel beneath this carefree exterior. Amber is afraid of losing control as a result of her experiences with her mother. i really liked oli's character, i hope we get to see more of him in book 2 because hes a sweet little boy who needs friendship and acceptance It’s amusing watching a UK author write about the States. Aided by her travels across the country, Bourne includes enough geography and some rich descriptions of Yosemite National Park. She also has a lot of fun in the vocabulary and cultural differences between the US and the UK (“poo-dank” hehe). I think she slips up at one point—she has Kyle talk about “year groups”, which should be grades in the US—but for the most part, the “British fish in American waters” trope is strong here. To her credit, Bourne doesn’t overuse it: Amber spends most of the novel at the camp run by her mother and stepfather, so we don’t see her interacting too much with the rest of American society. Holly Bourne really understands life, insecurities and opinions for teens and I think her writing is some of the best portrayals of it I've ever read. --Miriam is Reading

PDF / EPUB File Name: How_Hard_Can_Love_Be_-_Holly_Bourne.pdf, How_Hard_Can_Love_Be_-_Holly_Bourne.epub yes the main focus is evie's OCD and her thought process and trying to hide her illness while juggling school and boys and her family My sympathies lie, for the most part, with Amber. After all, in addition to being the protagonist, she is also a teenager, while her mom is a parent. Nevertheless, despite the first-person narration, Bourne still manages to portray Amber and her mom’s fraught relationship with depth and complexity. We see her mom’s pain, the daily struggle of a recovering alcoholic—but we see it through the eyes of the child whom it has affected so dearly. And, yeah, Amber says some harsh things, does things that might not be advisable—but it all makes sense in the context of what she has gone through. How Hard Can Love Be? neither sugarcoats nor sensationalizes the life of a recovering alcoholic and her estranged teenage daughter: Bourne carefully distills the truth, for all its vinegar. i was really worried where it was headed but towards the end, i began to appreciate how the author played it out bc it made it have a much greater impact

I adore the whole feminist aspect in this series. It's completely retaking the word, and the word 'spinster' for that, and that's what this generation of teenagers need. Feminism is such a 'dirty' word, which is ridiculous when it means 'equality'. I can't recommend these books enough for today's teenagers, with the hope that, someday, being a feminist will not be something so controversial. The answer is, simply, yes. I'm probably going to annoy someone here, but I hated Amber's mam. I understand how hard alcoholism can be, for the person suffering, and their loved ones, but I felt like Amber's mam always had an excuse, or would blame someone else. The main reason she didn't want to see Amber for so long was because it could push her over the edge, and she treated Amber like crap when she was in California. She knew how much Amber hated her step-family, but she was content to let her suffer as long as it didn't effect her. Not the best example of parenting. The only time I really liked her was at the very end, and even then it wasn't much.

I wanted to love this book, and although there was so much I did love, there were also parts that had me wanting to pull my hair out. Ik leefde enorm met het hoofdpersonage mee. ik voelde haar ellende, ik voelde haar uitgelatenheid, ik maakte me dermate zorgen om haar dat ik het in mijn buik voelde..Everyone's on the cliff edge of normal. Everyone finds life an utter nightmare sometimes, and there's no 'normal' way of dealing with it... There is no normal, Evelyn.” Holly Bournen "Mikä kaikki voi mennä pieleen?" (Gummerus, 2017) on toinen Spinster Club -sarjaan kuuluva nuortenkirja. En ole ensimmäistä osaa lukenut, mutta eipä tuolla väliä, kyse kun on (virkistävästi) itsenäisistä r