As the story develops, there are times when the writing becomes erratic, all over the place, as it reflects Olive's behaviour. You as the reader feel for her, beg her to stop and hold your breath when she eventually crashes.This takes a talented writer to make you feel this way. The book was a good insight into what it's like living with a mental illness and trying to navigate life with that as a factor. However, in my opinion this book didn't depict the actual treatment process very well.

Fair warning: this book is not an easy read, especially if you’re dealing with mental heath issues on your own. Beware of the trigger warnings (listed below) and take care of yourself!

The book opens up with Olive having a really hard time. Again. For the third time. She is in her room, with pillows and duvets, cocooning herself away under her desk, trying to escape all noise, which makes her anxious, to the point of panic. But, as her mum points out, it's her dad's birthday, and they're having a barbecue, and people are coming round. Can't Olive just try? Can't she just pull herself together this once and try? But a barbecue, with all the people and all the noise, is Olive's worst nightmare. And she has to escape. Not just the noise, but herself, because she's realised she's not ok. This book did not touch me at all. I think it's mainly because I couldn't stand the main character. I feel really conflicted about that, because her being a bitch is part of her mental illness, and the entire point of the book is that she can't help that she was born this way. But Olive (the main character) is just annoying me so much. Not really in being mean, because I think that's very understandable and relatable. What annoyed me is that she went to a camp to learn how to deal with her mental illness, and then she concludes that the professionals don't know how to help her so she decides to do her own thing. Hun, if you were able to help yourself, you wouldn't be in the situation you're in. Not only do we follow Olive's journey, but since she was at a camp with others suffering from different mental health issues, we got to see and understand the side characters as well, see them coming together on a project and overcoming their differences. It was beautiful and enlightening.

Holly Bourne writes with insight, compassion, and not a hint of condescension to her young readership. As the story progresses, we see the group begin to work together and, what I enjoyed most, to shed their defensive cynicism. Their ultimate plan will intrigue you, involving papercraft, the Notting Hill Carnival, and an unexpected adaptation of the term ‘going viral.’

Age range(s)

Recently, our understanding of mental illness has begun to move away from purely biological models and towards one that considers the individual experience. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with you?” we are finally asking, “What happened to you?” More people feel brave enough to share their stories and this should only be encouraged, never ridiculed. I’m inclined to wonder what happened to Liddle, to make him someone who sneers at those fighting to make the world a kinder, safer place for young people. But it’ll take someone braver than me to find compassion for him. I’m going to continue fighting for young snowflakes, and empowering them to share their stories. Together, we can create an avalanche and, hopefully, a world that doesn’t make people ill. I don’t think that’s such a crazy thought. And during a conversation with Lewis - a maths genius who is helping out with her idea to save the world - she uses a maths metaphor to explain how people with mental illness are seen and treated:

Are We All Lemmings and Snowflakes? reminds me a lot of Am I Normal Yet?. Bourne is a master at talking about mental health for sure. I love how compassionate, how tender this book is in so many ways. I do wish that we had learned more about Olive’s life before coming to this camp—we only barely meet her best friend, Ally, and only hear superficially about stresses she experienced in the past school year. I understand the focus is on her experience at camp, yet I don’t really feel like I got to know Olive as well as I could. Something I truly appreciated was the fact that the author decided to include a story about traumatic labour. Olive’s mother wasn’t well after the birth of her baby girl. I think this is a very important issue that sometimes women are scared or uncomfortable to talk about. Labour can be a traumatic experience. Sometimes what should have been a beautiful moment unfortunately isn’t and it’s totally fine to suffer and to seek help and guidance to go through this dark time. As a mental health nurse in training, I have to say that I am so impressed with the way Holly has managed to portray Olive’s illness in this book. I managed to recognise her illness only a few chapters in as the book doesn’t actually specify Olive’s illness until quite far into the book as she doesn’t actually want to know what her diagnosis is. I thought this was such a great little addition to the book as there are people living with a mental illness who don’t necessarily want to put a label on their behaviour and it actually really interested me that Holly chose to take this approach. Bourne is a former news journalist, and was nominated for Best Print Journalist of the Year in 2010 [18] while working as a news reporter at the Surrey Mirror. [4] She graduated from the University of Sheffield [19] with a first-class degree in Journalism. [20] Bibliography [ edit ] Standalone novels [ edit ]

The first half of the book is great and I enjoyed the characters, their dialogue, and the usual Holly Bourne humor and sarcasm. I even kept pausing to take note of quotable passages. But as soon as the characters (led by Olive, our main character) came up with their pseudo-superhero group which they call "Prime Numbers" to spread the "kindness" virus, it kind of went downhill from there. It was like the author was planning to write one thing and then ended up writing something else. I felt like it wasn't the direction she was shooting for but decided just to go through with it. I find that last part really interesting, especially after reading the quote in Challenger Deep, where Caden says, ' There is no such thing as a "correct" diagnosis. There are only symptoms and catchphrases for various collections of symptoms. [...]