Reviews

How Do You Like Me Now? by Holly Bourne

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katastalo's review

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emotional hopeful lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

robbio87's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

4.5 STARS

I am a big fan of Holly Bourne. Although I am 29, I have read all of her YA books so I was keen to read her debut adult novel. It didn’t disappoint.

As someone who reads a lot of ‘self help’ books, the premise grabbed me from the start. I really liked Tori, the main character. I also really liked the way this book examined the gaping chasm between how we present ourselves on social media versus the reality of life. One thing that bothered me was how long it took to reach the conclusion. Tori became a bit of a whiner as this dragged out - this is why I have dropped half a star.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others who like contemporary fiction.

UPDATE:- I’ve added half a star extra to my rating as I can’t stop thinking about the important message about social media this book contains. It reminds us that life online is very much about being perfect and reaching all those life milestones then showing off about them - when, actually, people have messy lives and often wouldn’t want to shout out to the world about the reality of daily life.

This is a netgalley review.

macajonii's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted sad slow-paced

4.0

lunapuella's review

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3.0

I struggled with this one. Holly Bourne can clearly write well, How Do You Like Me Now? is a fast and mostly entertaining read. But Tori was so deeply judgy of every single person she met - even her best friend - that I found it hard to empathise with her. I understand she's a flawed character and we're not always supposed to like her, but there was hardly any character development on this front. The novel ended just as she finally managed to leave her intensely dysfunctional relationship - something the reader has known must happen from pretty much page 1. I wish this had happened halfway through the book and we could have seen her grow from there.

kirjapinoni's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

miss_p1nky's review

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4.0

The opening is pretty interesting. The premise is quite unusual. There's a lot of depth and thinking here, about life, relationships, true-self, etc. I quite like this!