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The Places I've Cried in Public (A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick): 1

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Afterwards, puzzled Amelie decides to revisit all the places she cried when with Reese and in the process of doing so, and replaying events with the benefit of hindsight, begins to realise that consistency is a highly underrated love trait, especially when compared to lying, cheating and the trauma of abuse. Nothing that incriminating, of course. Nothing that couldn't be shushed away with a "you're too sensitive/needy/clingy/crazy". But damaging, nonetheless. These useful springboards for debate and learning contain short, relevant extracts from the book along with a selection of thought-provoking discussion questions and flexible activities that include roleplay, vlogging, mind-maps and memory maps.

Because of that, it took me a bit to get into the story. Nevertheless, I definitely wanted to finish it and over the course of the book, the story started to get better, especially the last part of it. I definitely got emotionally connected to Amelie, understood how she felt and was very proud as she started to understand that all of what happened wasn’t her fault. The way Reese treated her started to make me feel angry and I just wished I could tell her to run away from him. When I am rating this book - it is entirely based on how I felt about it. I don't want to talk about the characters or the writing. And this line - just hit me so hard. The trademark heartbreaking Holly Bourne moment I’ve come to expect near the climax of every book happens here too, of course, when Amelie visits her old friends in Sheffield and Everything Goes Horribly Wrong. One reason I read these books so fast is simply because I need to get through them as fast as possible, like ripping off a band-aid, because these are emotionally draining books. And yes, Amelie certainly makes mistakes—she is, like all of us, flawed on top of being young and inexperienced in these things, and I appreciate that we get lots of facets of her character. She screws up bad with Alfie; she gets her former best friend upset … it’s a whole thing. There are a few other details that really make this book stand out.

There is more to the story. A LOT more. But I'm not going to say more than this so as not to spoil but read this. please read this. Let’s start with the easy stuff. This book is about a teenage girl called Amelie who adores music and vintage cardigans. She has just ended a relationship with a guy called Reese (who is literally the devil but more on that later) and she is completely and utterly broken by it. I really enjoyed that the narrative was told in dual timelines - and I liked that we learnt what happened during the relationship and how it began at the same time as knowing what Amelie was currently going through. Holly Bourne definitely knew how to weave the timelines together so it flowed naturally and didn’t take me out of the story. It was also told in second person, with Amelie speaking directly to Reese, which I thought was a nice and unique touch. Second, the parents are great, as usual. This is something I don’t want to go unremarked about Bourne’s novels—so many YA novels neglect parents, or use them as casual antagonists. And sure, not everyone has great parents (or even a pair of parents), and those stories are valid. But I love that Bourne often portrays protagonists whose parents are as loving and supportive as they know how to be and yet the protagonist still struggles.

But the closer Amelie gets to Reese, the further away from her new friends and family she becomes, and understands less and less about love and relationships, where ‘even after the best night of my life, you still manage to make me cry’. Reese, like a drug, is described as a ‘giant sexy magnet’ and Amelie states that she felt ‘like I was wearing chainmail’.Starting A-Levels in a new town, a new school and being a painfully shy singer/songwriter who suffers from a ‘shyness rash’ and has a ‘full-blown obsession with cardigans’, Bourne, establishes a vulnerability in Amelie and the ensuing obsessive love/hate relationship with Reese where she ‘fell hard for Reese’ and it ‘looked like love’ and ‘felt like love’ but is not sure if love is ‘supposed to hurt like this’. You've probably guessed this already, but it's not a romance. This is a book about that insidious form of emotional abuse that grows, slowly, out of a relationship you thought was wonderful. Very few authors manage to portray this right, I think. Very few successfully show how someone can fall in love with a person who is manipulating and hurting them. Bourne does, though, and it makes for an emotional and skin-crawling read.

It questions romantic love as a recipe for happiness and explores the many shapes and forms love can take and what coping strategies we can use when things go pear-shaped. I’ve cried in plenty of public places, like on the train or in a long queue. It’s completely normal! We can’t always regulate our emotions, and I’m a firm believer that crying is really helpful. We should embrace the tears when they come, not try and hide them!I can take my journey and my scars and I can use the lessons they gave me to ensure my future path has fewer tears in it. There’s a trail of salt across the country, from the tears that rolled down my cheeks, but it ends here. I personally related to Amelie in a number of ways. Both of us are Yorkshire girls, both of us left the comfort of the world we knew to go to the south of England where people say "bath" like "barf", yet make fun of our accents, and don't know that gravy on chips is the best thing ever. For Amelie, though, the change was much harder. She left her friends and loving boyfriend right in the middle of her A levels, out of necessity for her dad's job. She went to a new town and school where she had no friends, no support group, no one to "get" her and make her feel important.

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