The Yearbook by Holly Bourne - Review

I can sometimes take or leave Holly Bourne, so I wouldn't rush to read stuff by her, but when I was browsing in the library recently for anything new in YA, I came across this and I was really intrigued by the premise. I actually really liked the book and think it's the best thing I've read by Holly. I feel like she's really dug into emotions here and it has really paid off. I hope all her future books are this deep and this good!

So Paige is in Year 11 at school and her life is pretty difficult. At home, she lives with her mum and dad. Her elder brother, Adam, her dad's favourite, has gone away to uni, so her dad is in an even worse mood than usual. The whole household revolves around him and his bad moods. Every time Paige walks into the house she has to gauge the temperature to see if her dad is angry or whether her parents are putting up a good front. Her dad is abusive. Paige sort of kids herself that it's not 'that bad' because he doesn't hit her or her mum, but honestly, it's pretty bad. He's a bad person. He doesn't love Paige or any of the rest of the family at all. Paige cries herself to sleep a lot of nights and she is lonely and sad. 

At school she is lonely too. She had a friend called Ruby who had to move away, and since then Paige has been by herself. She spends her lunchtimes in the library and she is also a journalist on the school newspaper, which she loves. She is friendly with the school librarian who also oversees the paper. But she isn't really registered by anyone in her year. She's just a nobody. She watches all the bullying that occurs in her year - for example when one of the popular boys does bunny ears on a boy called Charlie when they're having their year photo taken - and she records it in notebooks. She has done this for years and years but she has never done anything with her records. 

Two things happen. Firstly, Paige finds some writing in a book and begins a correspondence with someone. They end up meeting and he is Elijah, a boy in the sixth form. My one criticism is that he is perhaps a bit too perfect, but I couldn't even mind because honestly Paige deserves some happiness in her life. He brings her out of herself and they have a lot of fun together and eventually trust each other hugely. Elijah does have problems himself, which I liked. He is very cute. 

Secondly, The Awfuls get put together with the newspaper students to make the year's yearbook for when they leave school. The Awfuls are the top bullies, top dogs of the whole school. There's Grace, lead Awful, Amelia, and Laura. They want to put together pages with memories of each year of school, but the stories and photos they choose are firstly cented around themselves and secondly really mean to anyone else they mention. There are extracts throughout the book so the reader knows that Paige did stand up for herself and everyone else, so I liked knowing that and couldn't wait to find out how we got there. 

I want to describe this book as Carrie meets Mean Girls... it's great. Five out of five from me!