I've been sitting on this review for a while as I'm not sure how to write it. Even now, I'm still not exactly sure how I feel about this, but I wanted to show you guys that I have read this.

The backstory to this is the same as some of my other reads of late: I originally had an eProof from the lovely publisher via NetGalley. However, over Easter weekend, my Amazon was hacked/deleted, all my eProofs got wiped off my kindle. But, I saw this on sale for 99p, I bought it without a second thought, as this book intrigued me as soon as I first heard it.

When Seb is offered a place at a radical retreat to tackle the national crisis of teenage unhappiness, he is determined to do well. But he find himself being pulled to the mysterious Finn, Seb begins to realise that there's something deeply wrong with HappyHead as the tasks that are meant to be help their wellbeing become more and more disturbing...

Like I said in my first sentence, I been sitting on this for a while because I am completely torn over how I feel about this book. This book has really strong positives that work in its favour but, at the same time, there is one big issue that we can't escape from.

The positives. Let's start there. I loved the idea of this book tackling mental health and how people we trust can abuse the level of trust and power, use people's mental health and gaslighting to their advance. We see it in the news so often about people in position of trust who go on the misuse it to horrible and dangerous effect (yes, I was reading this when the Phillip Scofield story broke and am writing this on the Sunday when the mystery BBC presenter story is beginning to come out). The same goes with gay conversion.

Also, I really liked our lead character of Seb. He's relatable, a bit naive, desperate to please. We've all been there, haven't we, as teenagers? He's gay and it's nice of have a lead queer character where their sexuality identity isn't the driving force of the story. Plus, Seb's internal voice is really funny. Very dark, very sarcastic, and it made me warm to him within the first few chapters.

I also liked the writing. Josh Silver's writing was easy to read and was compulsive reading. It wasn't the the most descriptive writing, but there were chapters that tackled Seb's mental health that were gripping and were the best chapters in the whole story.

I did say there was one big issue that I had with this book and there was no way I could escape it: I feel like I read this before and it has been done better, There were feels of dystopian novels and TV shows that tackle the set-up better.

Am I going to read the second and final book (I think it was announced that it will be called Dead Happy) in this series? Yeah, I think so. It was an addictive holiday, read on the beach with a nice cocktail. But it didn't leave much of an impact. Hopefully, with the next book, it was give us a sucker-punch. Plus, with Taron Egergton going to adapt the book into a movie, I think this will make a really interesting and gripping movie.

I LOVE that we were given a queer male main character and I wish for more of them in books like this! In my opinion, it’s just too often straight girls and the story about Seb and his character was just so refreshing in that regard that it made me giggle.

Unfortunately, I don’t find the statement „Like Hunger Games but better“ on the cover appropriate. On the one hand, it’s too judgmental and subjective a statement, and on the other, the stories and characters are just massively different. In my opinion, you can also promote a book/audiobook with its own qualities and don’t have to resort to such an inappropriate comparison.

The pacing of the story was wonderful; everything started slowly and just got more and more oppressive as time went on. Seb was also wonderfully chosen as the protagonist. He has such a fascinating and human and approachable character that I immediately found myself empathizing with him. Seb is just SO far from perfect and yet not pitiful, ( just a typical, realistic teenager) that I couldn’t help but like him.

As is often the case, the „love story“ / „attraction“ went far too fast for me and I couldn’t follow it all at all. I wonder if sometimes it wouldn’t be better to just leave things vague (without any intimate things happening) and leave the reader alone with their imagination. But maybe emotions are formed differently in such extreme situations than under normal circumstances. I don’t know.
The story itself was exciting and I liked the concept extremely much.
Judging by the ending, I suspect a second book and I’m very, very excited <3


The audiobook is really wonderful; Huw Parmenter reads drop-dead good! ( Although a little slow - I listened to the book at 1.25x speed and that was perfect for me) I love his courage and creativity when it comes to voice variety. But not only different voice ranges are used because Huw Parmenter also establishes different accents for characters, which is nice. For non-native speakers sometimes difficult to understand, but doable. I have to say, however, that it was exactly this courage that drove me crazy at times.
In some situations, you can hear him swallow or it just sounds salivating. It FITS the situation, but ... for every noise-sensitive person (like me) it is pure torture and I unfortunately almost had to throw up whenever that happened ... (and I would have liked to stop the audiobook, although I found everything else great).
What I really liked, though, was the linguistic finesse with which Seb and his insecurities and fears were portrayed. When the voice suddenly became so high-pitched and squeaky and anxious .... God, I got goosebumps!

🙂🙂🙂BOOK REVIEW - HAPPY HEAD by Josh Silver AKA @smudgecotton🙂🙂🙂

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you @netgalley @bolindaaudio and Josh for providing me with a copy of the audiobook for review. The British narration to this was perfect.

This is a stressful book! My lord this was stressful. I pulled waaaayyyyy too many 'wide eyes' faces pretending to stress connect with an invisible person whilst reading this. But of course, stressful in the 'completely invested' way which I am sure Josh was aiming for!

🚨POTENTIAL SPOILER🚨 - don't read and get upset with me.

This book had me on edge the ENTIRE 👏 TIME 👏. The constant 'do they, don't they, go full Squid Games on these kids?' is real. Do they? I don't know!!!!!

I mean, I do know because I have read the book but you don't really want to know if you haven't - where is the fun in that. But like to draw comparisons to The Hunger Games on the cover did NOT help my stress levels.

But my biggest criticism is a bloody cliffhanger like that with zero google-able information showing for 'happy head Josh Silver sequel' !!!!!! I am now following to be informed of any and all updates on this front.

*****Edits - can you believe that less than 24 hours after writing this caption and following Josh, he posts about Happy Head 2!?!?!?! 'Dead Happy' March 2024. That isn't a concerning title AT ALL! 🙃🙃🙃*****