*Trigger Warning* sexual assault and abuse.
I am a huge Holly Bourne fan so I have been excited about this book for a long time and it did not disappoint. It deals with some very heavy topics which, yes, made bits of it hard to read at times but this is the reality for women every day and this book is so good at shedding light on that. Pretending is such a powerful book that perfectly captures the things that women have to go through on a daily basis and sheds light on the fact that we may change the way we do things to make life easier for men without even realising. This book is all about accepting yourself just as you are, something I think we all need to do more!

A book of real emotion - angry and raw and honest and funny. Complicated, real characters spill from the page and keep you reading, questioning yourself, thinking about you and your relationships and all that shapes who you are.

I’ve always wanted to read this author - now I’ll definitely be looking for more by her.

I loved this novel, with its wonderful cast of characters and gorgeous prose. The storyline was engaging and flowed seamlessly.
Highly recommended!

Funny & brutally honest! This is full of Holly Bourne's signature wit and complicated female characters. I really hope they are teaching her books in schools one day.

Pretending is a book of many facets. Following a highly traumatic experience April has to deal with the significant impact on her mental health. Working in a charity aligned to her trauma, she often has to face her demons and the reader grasps the weight and gravity of these issues. It is an insightful and thought provoking read.

Alongside this April is dabbling in looking for a man. Warmly told and, while normally out with my reading choice, I hugely enjoyed ‘April’ dating and getting herself in a muddle in the guise of her alter-ego.

I did however feel that there was a little too much repetition of the anti-men message and that the dating advice of April’s alter-ego jarred a little with the flow of the story.

Overall, really enjoyable and a rounded up 3.5*.

With thanks to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for an advanced copy in consideration of an honest review.

I love Holly Bourne. I devoured her last story and then this one so quickly.
Pretending is another smack in the face piece of contemporary reading in what it is to be a woman in 2020. She takes difficult, challenging and very relevant topics and yet conveys ideas and messages with humour and thought. I liked and understood April, I felt like I knew her even though I have such a different view point. This story is engaging and frustrating and relatable, it will be a top book of 2020 and I am so privileged to have read it early doors. I want to read it again, and look forward to doing so.

Fantastic! I couldn't put this down. I felt so much empathy for April and Megan, it's tough being single in this day and age. I think most of us have a truth that we feel we have to keep hidden.
There were some traumatic moments, but they were dealt with in a sensitive way and I admire the fact that the author tackled things with such warmth and compassion.
Another great insightful read.

Wooooo, what a punch of a book. It is angry and it is real and while it can feel stark, the heart is unmistakable,. I loved the comradarie of the boxing club girls and the aforementioned starkness of the aftermath of abuse. A tough read at times but worth it.

After a point where I didn't think I would enjoy this book (though I think the formatting had something to do with that) I did. A great story by Holly Bourne. Quite a departure from other books by Holly but really powerful and really powerful message.

Another brilliant, bitingly honest and horribly real novel from Holly Bourne. There's nothing quite like the funny and visceral way she writes.

April is tired of men. Every time she thinks she's found a man she can trust, they've proven to be awful and she ends up heartbroken. She's nice, she's normal, but she wishes she could be more like her imagined perfect woman: Gretel.

She's the cool girl, the manic pixie dream girl. She's everything April should be, in theory, so that's who she becomes, as an act of almost-revenge. And when she tries out this new persona, she meets Joshua. The problem? He seems different than the rest.

This started as an unsuspecting book. An easy read. Then as April's work with charity, the nuance of how trauma can impact people, fear of being rejected as yourself, flaws being exposed, not being good enough, all began to unfold - the book swept me up. Funny, nuanced, touching, brilliant. Really liked this one.

A very touching read, hits a few nerves with me as I could see so many shared traits it’s scary reading them and seeing your own flaws reflected back at you, but as always Holly does everything so sensitively and handles everything carefully, it’s so well written and researched, it’s an emotional read as Hollys books always are, but powerful and uplifting and full of hope. Uncomfortably accurate at times, but worth the discomfort, a wonderful powerful read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I enjoyed ‘How do you like me now’ which was not the easiest read but very relevant so I thought I had some concept of how this would be however I found this quite a struggle. The subject matter is not an easy one and Holly has done a fantastic job portraying April’s mental issues with men primarily caused by a previous abusive relationship in which she was raped. That said her mental feed is very vitriolic, I’m not saying it’s unsurprisingly so however it did leave me confused as to why she keeps putting herself out there when she approaches relationships with such a negative mindset. I really just wanted to take her out of her life and support her through her issues to be honest. Prepare to be challenged with this however it is a very (sadly) necessary read

Pretending by Holly Bourne is the first book from the author that I have read. To be honest I must have my head in the sand because I have not heard of her before and by searching on the internet that she has wrote several books. So, when I read the blurb for this book, I thought I was going to read a funny Rom com and a light-hearted read. Boy was I wrong. This book is about Rape and Mental health.
Don’t get me wrong this was a well written book about what is rape and someone who experienced it and what effects it has in their lives, how they cope and how they get over something like that and how they build new relationships. I didn’t really like the ‘character’ of Gretel and cringed in some parts. But I must say that this is a book that needs to be told. Well done to the author. This is a very thought-provoking book that leaves you with lots of unanswered questions but in a good way.4 stars from me.

Holly Bourne has been writing brilliantly honest books for a while now - first with her teenage fiction and then with her excellent adult debut a couple of years ago. I thought How Do You Like Me Now was devastating. Pretending is something even rawer. Holly Bourne manages to capture women’s darker sides; the thoughts they don’t normally verbalise. And it’s brilliant.

I don’t think it’s a spoiler to give a big trigger warning for this book - the main character is unpacking a lot of trauma and there are a lot of upsetting bits in it. But it’s all necessary.

My only real critique is that I feel it ended quite abruptly, I would have liked a few more chapters there.

Thanks to the publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Beautifully written. Any book that makes you cheer out loud at the last page is worth recommending to everyone you’ve ever met, in my humble literary opinion.

I had to stop reading on a couple of occasions, purely because April’s negative self-talk bares such a striking resemblance to my own, I needed to step away for a moment. Holly has perfectly captured every female relationship neurosis and delivers it back to us, sometimes uncomfortably accurately.

This book deserves all the amazing success I know it will achieve, and I for one will still be cheering. Well done for broaching the difficult stuff, your bravery as a writer will have such a huge impact. Be proud.

Pretending by Holly Bourne is maybe the greatest novel I’ve read in the last few years. Not because it’s set to be a literary masterpiece and win the Man Booker but because it represents the experiences, feelings and hurt of so. many. women. It is a cuddle to every woman out there who has been through an experience that they shouldn’t have had to at the hands of a man. And, whilst I promised myself I wouldn’t turn this review into a rant - I feel like every woman has some experience of feeling threatened, belittled and/or abused by a man. And so many men just DON’T get it because they come from a place of male privilege. Even intelligent, gentle and kind men I’ve met in the past have not understood their privilege purely by being a man. And, despite me describing experiences to them that made me uncomfortable, they can’t see anything inherently wrong with their male peers. It’s a continuous cycle of explaining what it’s like to be a woman and then being told your feelings aren’t valid and perhaps you’re overdramatising something etc continue ad infinitum. My favourite story of male privilege was when I complained to HR of the company I worked for that I felt my (male) boss was being sexist and I felt uncomfortable in the workplace. His (lol, yes, male HR) solution was ‘it’s not that bad, in 20 years time you’ll just look back and laugh.’ GOD how I wished I had the balls to do something about that. Instead I just sat there gormlessly.

ANYWAY, this novel is wonderful in so many ways. It is witty, moving, educating, accessible, relatable and, most of all, honest. It isn’t a laugh a minute and there is some hard-hitting stuff within the pages but I think it highlights the plight of so many women of being abused at the hands of a partner or lover who they think they should put up with because they love them. It restored my faith in women and gave me a sense of strength to keep pushing through the male dominated spheres in my world. It was also strangely cathartic and provided me with the chance to reflect on my own experiences and re-validate them and confirm that I’m not just being ‘overdramatic’.

There was one line in the book, that I can’t remember word for word so please excuse my crude interpretation, but it was something along the lines of this:

Statistics say that 1 in 4 women will be raped but actually it’s more like 1 in 4 women WON’T be raped.

And it just hit me so hard in the feels. And WOMEN, we are strong and beautiful, and we put up with SO MUCH. And please just read this book.

It was fine, but just not as good as her adult debut How Do You Like Me Now? I felt more could have been done with the brilliant concept, as it ended up being fairly predictable.

Thank you! We included the book on Caboodle (20 books to look out for in 2020), and will read and review on Pretty Books!

Whilst this was an incredibly important book, it is categorically not the book that is advertised as “hilarious”. This is fundamentally not a “funny” book - it deals with sexual abuse and it’s impact on mental health in an overt manner which makes for very uncomfortable reading at times. This is fine - if you know what you are going into - but is distressing if you do not. This is advertised as a funny romantic book and those who are not familiar with Holly Bourne, in particular, will be in for a big surprise. I didn’t find any part of this “hilarious” and whilst the description is factually accurate in that April pretends to be Gretel and then falls for Joshua, the main character arc is completely omitted. I wouldn’t have chosen to read this had I known due to the distressing way this is presented and - however accurate that may be - which therefore had a negative impact on my own mental health. This is disappointing to me as I have read and enjoyed all of Holly’s other books (adult and young adult alike). More accurate copy next time, please.