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One of my favorite things about Heartstopper is how it normalizes boys being affectionate and vulnerable without shame or hesitation. Once Charlie and Nick have had their initial confession, they’re never hesitant to tell each other exactly how much they like each other and how wonderful they find each other. It’s so rare to see male characters being allowed to be so expressive and loving and unapologetically so.  They’re always like this, but my favorite example is when they’re at the arcade and Nick tells Charlie their snow day was one of his favorite days ever, blatantly tells Charlie how much he likes him and asks if Charlie likes him, and Charlie just. Lights up as he says he does. Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like he couldn’t be more excited to say it. And then he fearlessly tells Nick how much he wants to kiss him and goes for it after getting consent to kiss him in public. How Charlie and Nick wear their hearts on their sleeves might be my favorite part of their characters, and it’s just so refreshing for teenage boys to see masculinity that is so healthy and loving and open 

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Nick liking bubblegum flavour only to realize that Charlie's chocolate shake is way better than his is a metaphor for Nick thinking he's straight until he falls for Charlie change my mind

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What I really like about Nick Nelson is that when he asks Charlie to join the rugby team and Charlie essentially expresses concerns about not being good enough to play with the team, Nick reassures him that is just the local school team. This might seem like a small thing but Nick is popular in school for being an excellent rugby player. Even people like Elle, who don’t know Nick very well, know him as “the rugby king”. His whole social identity is based on this and still he is aware that it’s just a school sport and he invites this boy he likes into the team because he thinks maybe he will be good and if not, it’s still nice to have him. Nick is not just a good friend or boyfriend, he is genuinely a good and mature person.

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Normal people by Sally Rooney

“All these years they´ve been like two little plants sharing the same plot of soil, growing around one another, contorting to make room, taking certain unlikely positions.”

I don´t really have an opinion on this novel, only emotions, which probably is the best compliment you can give a writer, even if the emotions aren’t entirely pleasant ones. But then, pleasantries are not what books are for. Normal people is an incredibly simplistic book, and I mean that in the best way possible. The language is light and easy, because it doesn’t need to be anything else to fit the story and its characters.

Marianne and Connell grow up in the same small town in the Irish countryside. Connell is, despite his shyness, quite popular and well-liked, while Marianne´s opinionated personality and her overall weirdness makes her an outsider for her classmates. Because Connell´s mother works for Marianne´s rich family, they get to know each other outside of school and start sleeping with each other, only to realise how much they like each other and how close they have grown. This ends before they go off to college, but there, they meet again. Now, Marianne has a big group of friends and is highly admired, whereas Connel struggles with fitting in at Trinity, especially because of his social status. Still, he and Marianne find their way back to each other and stay close over the next years, sometimes romantically involved with each other, sometimes as each other´s friends or confidantes.

“It´s not like this with other people.”

With them growing and growing up, the relationship is constantly shifting. I wouldn’t call this novel a love story. It is more that these two people have an understanding about how they are respectively, and who they are to each other. It is a story about life and about growth and things that happen to us and things we do to ourselves and to others. It is, needless to say, a wonderful story.

„He brought her goodness like a gift and now it belongs to her.”

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Almost love by Louise O‘Neill

„I felt dizzy with wanting. Wanting him, wanting money, wanting to feel happy, wanting my life to finally begin. I didn’t know what I wanted. All I knew was that I wanted. I wanted so much.”

Louise O´Neill is one of my favourite writers, her books are must-reads and they introduced me to the concept of the unlikeable protagonist. Or more important: the unlikable female character.

Sarah is one of them. She isn’t a heroine, not a role model, she is difficult, selfish, at times a bad friend. Still, her story is so important.

Almost love is split in two parts, Then and Now, which alternate throughout the story. The then part shows Sarah, freshly out of art college where she realised she wasn’t good enough to make a carrier out of paining. Instead, she works as an art teacher at a private school. There she meets the father of one of her students, Matthew Brennan, with whom she starts having an affair after some back and forth, enjoying the status that comes with this fame and money, hoping their affair will lead to something more. The Now part takes place a few years after things ended with Matthew. Sarah is now in a seemingly perfect relationship with Oisín but the aftermath of her affair with Matthew is still graspable in her life.

To me, the most interesting part wasn’t the affair, it was Sarah herself, her life, how she handled her childhood traumas, her loathing for her small home town in comparison to Dublin, her relationships with her father, her friends, her boyfriends. Like I said, Sarah is a heavily flawed character and it is interesting to see her life falling apart around her without her acknowledging any of her own responsibility. Of course, there are other morally grey characters in books but deep down, most of them are good people. Sarah isn’t, really, and to me, it felt good to see some of my worst traits represented in a novel. I didn’t have to like Sarah to understand some of her behaviours because I recognised them in myself.

Also, a big part of Sarah´s life and personality is being an artist. Everybody around her calls her that even though barely even touches a paintbrush throughout the whole story, as she is more scared to try and fail than to never even try. That was very appealing to me, not as a role model, but because we are always told to never give up, to follow our dreams, and seeing somebody actually giving up and failing was such a relief.

Almost love is definitely not a romance story or your average book, but it is definitely something you have never read before.

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What happens once you kill yourself? Because I'm ready to go.

You wanna know what happens once you kill yourself? Your mother comes home from work and finds her baby dead and she screams and runs over to you and tries to get you to wake up but you won’t and she keeps screaming and shaking you and her tears are dripping onto your face and your dad hears all the screaming and runs into the room and he can’t even speak because the child that he loved and the child that he watched grow up is gone forever and finally your little sister runs into the room to see what all the fuss is about and she sees you dead. The person she looked up to and loved. The person she bragged about to  her friends, the person she wanted to be just like when she grew up, the person that made her feel safe. But she’s never really going to get to grow up and smile and laugh and love because she’ll always be consumed with this feeling of missing you. And now there’s something missing from your family and they can barely look at each other anymore because everything reminds them of you but you’re gone and hurts more than anything. and you think that your mom never cared because she was always busy and yelling at you to finish your homework and clean your room and forgot to say I love you sometimes but really, she loved you more than anything and she doesn’t leave the house anymore, she can’t even get out of bed and she’s getting thinner and thinner because it’s too hard to eat. Your father had to quit his job and he doesn’t sleep anymore, every time he closes his eyes he sees his baby dead, and the image never goes away no matter how much alcohol he drinks. And at school your best friend sees that your seat is empty and she gets this sick feeling in her stomach and that’s when she hears the announcement. You killed yourself. And suddenly she’s screaming and crying in the middle of class and no one even bothers comforting because they’re all  busy sitting there staring at your empty seat with tears dripping down their cheeks and all she wants is for you to hug her and tell her it’s gonna be okay like you always did, but this time, you’re not there to do it, everything is dark now that you’re gone and her grades are slipping, she barely goes to school anymore and she ended up in hospital after taking too many pills because she wanted to see you again. the girls who used to make fun of the way you dressed feel their throats get tight, they don’t talk to each other anymore, they don’t talk to anyone, they’re all in therapy trying so hard not to blame themselves but nothing works. and your teacher who always gave you a hard time stares blankly at the wall, she quits her job a few days later. And then your boyfriend hears the news and he can’t breathe, he still calls you a lot just to hear your voice and he talks to you on facebook but you never message him back, he can’t fall in love again because every girl he meets reminds him of you, he’s never going to get over you, he loved you and he cries himself to sleep every night, hating himself and slicing his skin because he couldn’t save you and he’s never going to hold you in his arms or hear you laugh again. Now everyone who knew you, whether they were a big part of your life or someone you passed in the hallway a few times a week, they carry this aching feeling around inside them because you’re gone, and they miss you, and they don’t know why you left but it must’ve been their fault and they should’ve stopped you and they should’ve told you they loved you more and that feeling is never going to go away. And so you killed yourself

but you killed everyone else around you too.