The Manifesto on How to be Interesting by Holly Bourne

The Manifesto on How to be Interesting
by Holly Bourne

Bree is seventeen, she lives in a big house with security gates, she's always the first one with her hand up in class to answer questions, she has special feelings for her English teacher, Mr Fellows, her best (and only) friend is the equally intelligent and nerdy Holdo with whom she spends all her free time watching films, her dad is always at work so she never sees him, and her mum is a yummy mummy spending all her time at the gym or out with friends for a healthy lunch. But Bree is also a little bit damaged. She is considered a freak at school by the gang of popular and pretty (but nasty) girls, she is teased by the handsome, big-headed Hugo and his loathsome circle of friends, and she self-harms to take away the pain of being miserable and uninteresting. Then one day, she decides to set up a blog and make a list of all the things she needs to do to become interesting, namely to become one of the gang of pretties to see how they live their lives. But what starts out as an experiment quickly becomes a way of life which she finds it difficult to extricate herself from, as one awful incident leads to another.

I wasn't sure how I felt about this book. I had mixed feelings for Bree. On the one hand I felt sorry for her - the only way out of what she thought was a miserable existence was to self-harm. We've all been teenagers, we've all been through varying degrees of loneliness and sadness, and it's awful that some feel the only way out is to hurt themselves.Why did she think she was below everyone else? She knew for herself that the girly gang were just nasty gossip-spreaders so why want to become one of them? And the incident with the awful Hugo - I can't believe she actually went through with it, hoping that he would turn out to be a different type of person, when of course he wasn't.

The one person who was left out from her new life and the only character I liked and wished was taken further was Bree's friend Holdo. I can't believe she would've just abandoned a best friend just like that and not told him of her plans.

It's a storyline that is probably played out all the time in schools - unpopular girls changing who they are to try to become popular. We know as adults it's always better to just stay true to yourself and just be who you are - people respect you more for it. Teens will probably love this book, but I just found it a bit grating, sad and annoying.