REVIEW! It Only Happens In The Movies by Holly Bourne

This book was a complete breath of fresh air and exactly what every girl should read. I had high expectations from this book after hearing about it quite a lot from a few different people, and honestly it exceeded every single one of them. Also SPOILER WARNING!! this review will have spoilers. 

My Rating: ★★★★

So the blurb for this book (taken from Goodreads) is:

Audrey is over romance. Since her parents' relationship imploded her mother's been catatonic, so she takes a cinema job to get out of the house. But there she meets wannabe film-maker Harry. Nobody expects Audrey and Harry to fall in love as hard and fast as they do. But that doesn't mean things are easy. Because real love isn't like the movies...

The greatest love story ever told doesn't feature kissing in the snow or racing to airports. It features pain and confusion and hope and wonder and a ban on cheesy clichés. Oh, and zombies... 

I related to Audrey a lot in this book, cliches are overrated, overused and just unrealistic. Watching romance movies does my head in, because I know from experience that that's not what love is like - I mean don't get me wrong I'll watch romance movies, and not hate them, but I'll then go on to point out everything wrong after the film has finished.

I made a lot of notes about this book while reading it and the first, and probably one of the most important ones is the part where Audrey tells Alice what happened when her and Milo tried to have sex. Alice hits the nail on the head when she lets Audrey know that Milo was in the wrong and all he thought about was it feeling good for himself. That's one common misconception that petrified me when I was a teenager, thinking your first time had to be painful. Girls, you need to know this part, do not think it's normal for your first time to hurt, foreplay is key, and I know this is such a taboo subject but it shouldn't be. When this sort of thing was spoken about within my group of friends when I was a teenager (which was only 10 years ago, omg 10 years! I feel old) we would all squirm and want to change the subject. In this same part of the book was probably my favourite quote of all time. Everyone behold Holly Bourne's words; "Essentially my vagina had a Gandalf standing at the entrance, and he thought Milo's dick was a fire demon."

So back to the story, page 292 where Harry tells her that he thinks he's falling in love with her, my heart goes out to her because I think most girls have had this moment when they're young and in love and they've believed the guy, hell the guy has probably believed it in that moment (before he messes everything up). And I'm not ashamed to admit that at this point in the book I started falling for Harry, I'm just glad he's only a fictional character. Next I want to talk about the break up... so the moment I read the lines "that was the week we broke up" I knew how I wanted the book to end. I didn't want them to get back together. No matter what the reason for a break up, getting back together with that person never works, it just delays the inevitable having to move on from them.

Okay I want to point out how selfish I think her parents and brother are. Her dad is *inserts inappropriate word*, her mum is hurting, I get that, but she puts Audrey, her seventeen year old daughter in the middle of her divorce. That's not right, no child should have to do that, and don't get me started on her brother; he leaves it all for her to deal with while he goes off to uni and doesn't bother... then guilt trips her constantly for not being there. Granted her mum and brother see the light in the end but Audrey had to deal with it on her own for too long.

The ending was everything I hoped. When she found out what Harry had done and walked (or rather ran) away I was so proud, then he tried to win her back and for a moment I thought my hopes would be crushed but she stood by her decision. What got me the most was "The only love affair I needed to invest in right now was one with myself. Spend some time with me. Figuring out myself and why I picked the relationships I did." This is so important and I learnt this the same was Audrey did and I think this is one of the reasons I loved this book so much, and why I cried so much in the last few pages. In a way I kind of relived my memories and realising how far I've come in the last two years was everything I needed. So thank you Holly, thank you so much.