A couple of weeks ago, on the day the government announced that libraries would be closing for however long the Covid-19 pandemic lasted, I took a trip to the local knowledge fountain to stockpile books for the long "holiday" ahead. Browsing the young adult section with a significant pile of craft books cradled in one arm, I was unimpressed by the usual selection of high school romance stories with mind-numbingly predictable plots, about which I could not care less. Just as I was about to travel to the adult section to find something worth reading, I stumbled across this wonderful book.
With its attractive title and sophisticated air, it spoke to me. It screamed "I am satirical and witty. I am a beautiful hodge-podge of everything that makes a book worth reading by your standards. Come on, you know you want to lose yourself in my many wonderful paragraphs that poke fun at the dumbness of society."
The blurb reads- "Bree is by no means popular. Most of the time, she hates her life, her school, her never-there parents. So she writes. But when Bree is told she needs to stop shutting the world out and start living a life worth writing about, The Manifesto on How to be Interesting is born. A manifesto that will change everything... but the question is, at what cost?"
I would easily rank this as one of the best books I have ever read. The plot is based around Bree, a self-hating, deeply philosophical and intelligent teenager, who is also a failed novelist. Her teacher tells her that in order to write interesting books she must herself lead an interesting life. Bree then embarks on a quest in social experimentation by infiltrating the high, popular ranks of her school's social hierarchy to find out what makes people worth reading about. In order to do this, she must become "interesting"- this means being attractive and pretending to be a bully to befriend the most popular group of girls in the school. She blogs about her progress in this department- being invited to huge, crazy parties, diving into the complex love stories characteristic of popular people and finding out the darkest secrets about the queen bee of the private school and her smug cohort. Along the way, she finds love, finds herself and breaks down as a person about the cost of being popular and all she has lost in the name of social experimentation.
A brilliant, humorous, relateable yet insightful read with both an intriguing plot line and a deep existential message. The beautiful writing style and compelling dialogue of the remarkable Holly Bourne will excite, enlighten and engage you, both amusing you as a story and giving you considerable food for thought with its satirical approach to society and to the feudalistic hierarchy of secondary school. Other books about living the teenage dream of being popular and falling in love, set in a high school environment, bore us simply because we cannot see ourselves reflected in the characters. I never knew a book actually designed for my age group, the internet-brainwashed Gen Z, could thrill me so much.
I would recommend this book to young adults, specifically those who are considered to be outside the norm of society, which you probably are because of the fact that you are reading this blog. To anyone who likes delightful little sprinkles of satire and existential philosophy, and to anyone who likes a great mouth-watering dollop of emotion and suspense in their reading. In terms of a PEGI-type rating, I would rate it a 15, as it has sexual content and swearing.
Thank you for reading my review. Click on the picture to be hyperlinked to where you can buy this book. Don't forget to stay tuned for more reviews in the future, among other types of post. Stay safe and have a good day.
