Ever since she can remember, Effie has always felt like a failure, over-emphasised by her over-achieving and successful ‘best friend’ Kate. She has everything Effie has ever wanted – her own place, a great job, and a gorgeous fiancée. Yet Effie’s luck begins to change when she meets Theo, who makes her want to live her life to the fullest. What Effie doesn’t know is that Theo is keeping a large secret which will throw her new life upside-down. She begins to learn that people’s lives aren’t as perfect as they seem.
What I particularly liked about Very Nearly Normal by Hannah Sunderland are the themes this book talks about. It’s got everything you want from a romance novel; engaging characters, love, and drama, but it also talks about topics which are a lot deeper. Effie is struggling. She’s in her late twenties, and still doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life. I think most people at some point in their lives have dealt with feeling lost, so this made this book a lot more relatable to me. This made Effie quite a difficult character at first – she’s flawed, but doesn’t yet want to admit her role in her failures. As the book progresses, Effie as a character begins to transform. Very Nearly Normal is as much a book about a self-journey as it is a romance, which I really liked.
I also really liked the other characters in the book – Theo, Arthur, Toby, and eventually Otis, all have a profound impact on Effie’s life, some for the better, and others not so much.
I loved the references to popular culture throughout the book, like Mean Girls and Game of Thrones, to name a few. I thought these added to the sense of humour of the book, especially because I love all the things Sunderland references.
The book was pacey, light-hearted and easy to read, and I flew through it. I thought it was really refreshing to read, so I would really recommend!
A big thank you to Avon Books and NetGalley for providing me with an early copy of the book.
Favourite quotes:
“I’d always thought that films overplayed the whole broken heart thing, but now that I was feeling it for real, I knew that the films never did it justice.”
“I knew that my life was my own charge and if I didn’t like how it was going then I was the only one with the power to change it.”
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