Review: How Do You Like Me Now?

How Do You Like Me Now

You know, I didn’t know what I was going to end up making of How Do You Like Me Now. I’ve heard of Holly Bourne, obviously, because I do not live under a rock and her Am I Normal Yet has been on my TBR forever. I read The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting and honestly, it and I didn't click like I thought we might and yet, when I heard she was branching out into adult fiction I was intrigued.

How Do You Like Me Now is getting a lot of hype, and lots of positive feedback and I looked into it a little bit and thought it sounded like something I’d be interested in and so I decided that actually yes – this was a bandwagon I wanted to be on, please, and I gave it a go. I am a publicists dream, I swear: I have such bad bookish FOMO.

I am exceptionally glad that I do though, because I would have been so sad to have missed this one.

Here’s the thing: this book feels like it could have been written for me. For me; about me. I mean actually. I read the blurb and I imagined my own life at the start of my 30’s and wow.

Hang on a little minute, let me do a little copy-paste of the blurb.

 Turning thirty is like playing musical chairs. The music stops, and everyone just marries whoever they happen to be sitting on.’ Who the f*ck is Tori Bailey?There’s no doubt that Tori is winning the game of life. A straight-talking, bestselling author, she’s inspired millions of women around the world with her self-help memoir. And she has the perfect relationship to boot.But Tori Bailey has been living a lie.Her long-term boyfriend won’t even talk about marriage, but everyone around her is getting engaged and having babies. And when her best friend Dee – her plus one, the only person who understands the madness – falls in love, suddenly Tori’s in terrifying danger of being left behind.When the world tells you to be one thing and turning thirty brings with it a loud ticking clock, it takes courage to walk your own path.It’s time for Tori to practice what she’s preached, but the question is: is she brave enough?The debut adult novel by bestselling author Holly Bourne is a blisteringly funny, honest and moving exploration of love, friendship and navigating the emotional rollercoaster of your thirties.

Wow. I mean, this bit:

Her long-term boyfriend won’t even talk about marriage, but everyone around her is getting engaged and having babies. And when her best friend Dee – her plus one, the only person who understands the madness – falls in love, suddenly Tori’s in terrifying danger of being left behind.When the world tells you to be one thing and turning thirty brings with it a loud ticking clock, it takes courage to walk your own path.

That was my life, guys, until a few years ago: I was in this relationship with this guy that I had invested years of my life in, who kept professing to love me, who wouldn’t talk commitment but who still dangled the carrot of marriage and babies so that I kept on holding on, not wanting to leave because I believed he did love me really and because I had put so much into the whole thing and I didn’t want to be the girl that failed at love whilst everyone else succeeded around me (and wow was everyone else succeeding) but never ever really knowing quite where I stood, or, by the end, what I even wanted or who I was. It was a strange time, with lots of intense feelings and a constant knot in my chest.

So much of what Holly Bourne writes in this book, about Tori and Tom, about the way Tori feels, her issues with food, struck a chord with me, hit me right in the messed up relationship feels. They even have a cat, which she sometimes thinks he loves more than he loves her. OH HELLO. The thing about situations like this one is that you kind of don’t realise how much you’re kidding yourself it’s all ok until you can look back at it from the marvellous vantage point of actually being ok.

Seriously: that whole wanting it so badly because you were being teased by it – because it was being offered and taken away and hinted at but always later later later, and because you could see everybody else getting it and because somehow you thought that was what your life was supposed to look like, whilst at the same time having this niggling feeling that you might be better of out of it that you’re worth more than this, it’s the worst and this book gets that, it totally lands smack bang in the middle of those feelings in a brutally honest way and I LOVE it.

And whilst I want this to be a book review and not a dissection of my previous life, I need to mention the parallels to make the point: this book made me feel like there was somebody out there who got it, who got me.

It hit a nerve, it hit all the nerves and which sort of makes it hard to say that I enjoyed it from start to finish because let’s be real here: it’s hard to relax into a story that has you feeling like you’re under a microscope – but I am so glad that I read it and I feel so much better for it; I suspect I won’t be the only one who comes way from it feeling this way either which makes me think that perhaps this book is one that needed to be written.  It felt authentic – Tori and Tom’s relationship, the way she reacted to it, the getting drunk, the lashing out, the being filled with regret after the lashing out, the not being able to see past being in this relationship, the fear that if she can’t make this work she’ll never make anything work and will just be alone, the subtle ways in which Tom manipulated her emotions, it felt authentic.

Reading this book felt like a catharsis.

If other people come away from it feeling like I did – which is to say kind of validated and reassured that I was not the crazy needy person I was made to feel like I was at the time (oh hi there subtle gaslighting wow) – then that is a good and excellent thing. I feel better for reading this book. I feel better about what happened then and I feel better about who I am now and I don’t know, is that a weird thing to take away from a work of fiction? Perhaps it is, but there you have it: I do feel better. I think most people will find something to relate to here, honestly: if you’re a woman that is single or dating or in a long-term relationship, if you have children or want children or don’t want children, there’s something here for you and the way the book tackles friendships made me feel all the things.

There’s also a really excellent thread running through the book about social media and the impact it has on our mental state and again: YES.

It perfectly highlighted how toxic social media can be – how it can shape our perceptions of ourselves and everybody around us and how often those perceptions are skewed. (I cannot even tell you how much better I felt after deactivating my Facebook account last year) and I really liked how that played out and how it was worked into the story. Clever plot device is clever.

I’ve seen it compared to Bridget Jones this book and you know, I get it; I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it enjoyed something close to that level of success. In the way people related to Bridget Jones in the late 1990s (and I loved her, but I was in high school when I first read the book, and 18 when the film came out which meant I could love her for her without having to reflect on what her story said about my own life) I defy anybody in their early 30’s not to see something of themselves in Tori now - although she’s not as likeable as Bridget. That kind of makes her more real though, the way she’s a but of a dick. You root for her because she’s a bit of a dick. She’s human and so are you.

I devoured this book, I devoured it and I laughed and I loved it and I finished wondering what was going to happen next for Tori. I’m okay now, I’m not with that guy anymore and I’ve moved on. I’m settled and happy and I have a great guy in my life and I’m finding a way to leave all those insecurities behind me; I hope that she is too.

How Do You Like Me Now is out in June. You can pre-order a copy though and I totally think you should.