'The Yearbook' follows 16 year old Paige, who feels like she is invisible at school and at home with her family. Paige gets forced into helping make the new year 11 yearbook with the popular, mean girls in her year group but decides the best way to stay invisible is to go along with everything that the girls say, even when she doesn't agree with them. But then she meets Elijah, the boy who annotates the library books, and Paige finally finds someone she doesn't want to be invisible to.

I liked this book. I feel like it is a solid young adult book about friendship and standing for what you believe it. I really liked Paige as a main character and I really loved seeing her friendship with Elijah blossom throughout the book. I really loved how Paige and Elijah became friends through communicating in the annotations of the books in the library.

This book touches on a lot of hard hitting topics such as emotional abuse, domestic abuse and bullying, so I don't recommend picking this one up if you are in anyway triggered by those topics as they are very prominent in the book.

I think this book was just missing something for me personally. I definitely think that this is a book that a lot of people will enjoy but for me it just fell a bit flat, especially at the end because we got so much build up and then nothing really happened.

Holly Bourne's writing was amazing as always and I flew through this book so fast because it was so fast paced and easy to read.

I will always recommend Holly Bourne's books and this one is no exception, despite it not being my favourite of hers, but I know that so many people will love and connect with this book. I can't wait to read Holly Bourne's next book.

Thank you to Usborne Publishing for providing me with an advance copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is by far my favourite Holly Bourne YA book to date. She cultivates the exact feeling of high school from the perspective of a girl already experiencing the pain of domestic abuse. The way the two storylines merge and the way both issues of bullying are written about, is captivating and utterly heartbreaking. Elijah is every teenager,s swoon worthy side kick, empowering truth. I know my pupils will adore this book, and I needed this book when I was at school!

This review won't do the book the justice it deserves, but I'll try anyway. Holly Bourne is one of the Queens of contemporary YA (I'd argue THE queen...) and her reigns continues with this, her tenth book with Usborne. This may just be my favourite yet.
Holly is unafraid to tackle big issues with her books. In this one alone there's family abuse, slut-shaming, bullying, harassment, friendship break-ups, anxiety and loneliness. I quickly and deeply fell in love with Paige, the main character, and found finishing the novel so devastating as it meant leaving her behind. She's so well constructed, achingly believable and profoundly real-seeming. She lives and breathes beyond the page. Her feelings over the joy of finally being seen are painfully beautiful to read, the friendship that follows just so so joyful.
I hope every Paige finds this book and find within its pages the solace they so desperately deserve.
Just wonderful.

My 13 year old daughter will handle this one:


I really enjoyed this book. It was very relatable and it showed what school is really like. It is a very well written book. I love the character of Paige, and the ending was very satisfying. The description was kind of misleading because only a small portion of the book was dedicated to Paige standing up to the bullies, however it was still a really good book and I enjoyed it a lot. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to read a book that shows what secondary school is actually like.

I'm not a big fan of YA at all but I do love Holly Bourne's adult books and have been craving a new book from her, so I thought I would try one of her YA novels. And The Yearbook, which is about lonely teenager Paige navigating bullying at her secondary school, seemed like the perfect place to start! Unfortunately, The Yearbook was just way too YA for me, especially considering I grew out of the genre at fourteen. It was a very easy and mostly enjoyable read, I thought the portrayal of Paige's family difficulties and the toxicity of school bullying culture was great, but it was just a bit too earnest and self-importantly teenage for me. Elijah also reaaaally annoyed me at the beginning, and wow did I disagree with the ending. But this has received great reviews from YA readers, so I'd definitely check those out if you're interested in reading this! 3 🌟

One of those books, without hyperbole, that every teen should read. There is so much going on here - dysfunctional family relationships, bullying, coming of age, first steps into relationships - all interweaved with brilliant literary references. It helped that the books referenced are some of my absolute favourites too, of course.

Impeccably written, easy to relate to and with fantastic characters that are just so real, I made my way through this in half a day because I couldn’t put it down. An absolute masterpiece.

The Yearbook is marvellously entertaining and brutally honest,tackling issues such as bullying,slut-shaming,self-esteem, anxiety and emotional abuse.

Paige Vickers is a quiet girl,she writes for the school newspaper and keeps to herself, trying to stay as invisible as possible.At school and a home. Now, the popular girls have decided to take control of the year book,and have enlisted the newpaper to help.

But their chosen school “memories” are nothing but fabricated puff pieces and malicious rumours- and Paige has had enough.

To cope with her awful home life and trying to survive those dreaded school years Paige begins writing and answering messages in the margins of library books,where she meets a kindred spirit.

Her friendship with “Red Pen” finally gives her confidence (and a newfound voice to stand up to those bullies),she decides to make The Yearbook her battleground.

I loved Paige soo much, she was an incredibly relatable character, her longing for friendship coupled with her problems at home made me want to give her the biggest hug. There were also some eerily similar situations (like the rumours,etc.)that transported me back to my own school years, which led to a sense of Déjà vu (though I promise nowhere near as bad as the situation here).

I’m also impressed with the skill in which Holly Bourne raises awareness of, and tackles some rather important social issues such as,the emotional abuse and neglect Paige faces from her parents and how both this abuse and bullying can (and does) affect young people’s mental health.

Overall,I really enjoyed the YA Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower premise and the ending was absolutely satisfying.Holly Bourne has expertly proven once again, why she’s the Queen of YA fiction.

And lastly a massive thank you to Usborne Publishing and NetGalley for the e-ARC.

Wowzers! After every Holly Bourne book you’re convinced that’s her best work... until the next one. This was a brilliant read, I absolutely love YA and there is nobody who does it better.
Following Paige in her final year of secondary school was certainly a rollercoaster, she has so much going on at home, at school having a very small support network. It certainly plays with your emotions.

I love Holly Bourne, I think she is one of the best YA writers out there at the moment. Every new book I read by her is my favourite of hers.
I loved this so much. Paige's father and mother just broke my heart, and I think every girl who has been through secondary school will relate so strongly to the mean girls. It was also interesting to have the main character be someone who (because of her home life) keeps her head down and desperately tries not to be noticed and not to stand out. Again, I think this is something a lot of YA would be able to relate to.
Also, loved the love story. It was so classic.

4.5 stars ~

Okay, I loved this...

Our MC, Paige, is not diagnosed with any mental illness in the book...but she is quite obviously dealing with a lot of anxiety and paranoia over how people view her and feel about her, and it is SO well done. I saw a lot of my younger self in those issues. I just wanted to give her a hug and let nothing bad happen to her ever. I feel the description and the blurb of the book are a bit misleading...the book is more about Paige's journey to finding courage to deal with all the crap in her life. We know from the blurb and the foreword to the start of the book that is a foreword to the yearbook that Paige will end up changing the yearbook as the editor, but this is mostly dealt with in the last 5% of the book. The book is us getting to know Paige, her family, and her school life and her gaining the courage to tell the truth and stand up for herself and others. She makes a friend along the way by writing in the margins of library books, he's a little bit of a cliché but...an aware cliché - he doesn't care what people think about him and his favourite book is The Catcher in the Rye - he's all a bit manic pixie dream boy but it's a nice change from the opposite.

Anyway, if you want to dredge up memories of dumb rumours about you from secondary school that you forgot about, this is the book for you.

I loved this. As someone who experienced the hell of secondary school and who now teaches in one this resonated.

I'll be buying a copy for my classroom bookshelf!

TW: bullying; systematic bullying in a school that goes unchecked, mentions of students having to take time of school due to bullying/mental health problems, slut shaming, emotional abuse, physical abuse, parental neglect, lack of parental love, child abandonment - emotionally and physically

Thank you to NetGalley and Usborne Publishing for approving me to read an eARC

MY REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILERS AND REFERENCES TO LATER PLOT POINTS....
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It makes me quite sad to rate this book only 3* because the book wasn't bad but it was so misleading. Reading that plot I went in expecting that the main focus was going to be about Paige rewriting the yearbook throughout the book and how she was going to finally speak up about everything that's gone on at the school and the way people have been treated... and she does... in literally the last 5% of the book. I got to 70% of this book and was just thinking... where is this conflict about the bullying, about the yearbook, about Paige speaking up? Because it wasn't present at all in the first 80-90% of the book - it is literally the last 10% or so when things actually happen. I hate when blurbs make a book out to be one thing and then it's completely the opposite.

If this blurb had been reflective of the actual book, I would have enjoyed it more. Paige is a kind but quiet student who has been told by her family and friends that she isn't worth loving - her best friend dropped her and her family are AWFUL (apart from Polly who is lovely) and she is constantly made to feel lesser. Her father is abusive; not yet physical but emotional and gaslighting throughout her life, constantly putting her down and making her feel inadequate. Her one best friend moved away and left her behind and she just feels alone. Paige finds comfort in the pages of books; and within that finds a like-minded sole, Elijah, who enjoys scribbling in the sides of books as much as she does. If the plot was reflective of this, it would have been so much better - Paige's journey to escape from her abusive home and find herself is such an interesting and well-done narrative. But it's overshadowed for me by the weird yearbook plot that barely makes a splash in the story until that last 5%.

Paige speaks out against the bullies on one occasion and writes some responses to toilet graffiti - which also garner some other positive responses - but that's all she really does until, in that last 5%, where she finds out the mean girls have added in some awful categories into the yearbooks "most likely to" and so she rewrites it, and tells the truth. AND THEN THE BOOK ENDS. Yes we get a short article summing up that the girls were expelled and Paige luckily wasn't suspended (which the fact that this was even a thought is ridiculous) and then it's over!!! I was ready to give this book 4* before that but when I read this ending it just dropped to 3*. It was so disappointing to me. I felt like the whole book was building up to this showdown of Paige standing up to the bullies and then the book just ends - we don't even get to find out what else she added into the yearbook.

The book is too long; it spends so much time building up the story but there just isn't enough pay off. Condense this book down and give it a better plot summary and it would have been much better but unfortunately it just didn't line up with what it was described to be. Sadly I just didn't love this book as much as I hoped I would - which is such a shame because those sprayed edges are delightful...

Out 13th May 2021 for you to give your own review - my advice, don't read the blurb first.