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The Places I've Cried in Public (A BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick): 1

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I’ve run out of words to use that mean “crying”, and we’re not even at the Cube yet. I’m going to have to thesaurus.com the word. By the end of this, I’m going to be bewailing and lamenting just so I don’t bore you with the word cry. This book is like the YA version of It Ends with Us- feminist to the bones and written in a much better way and a more believable and real ending. The Places I've Cried nos muestra el desarrollo y las consecuencias de una relación abusiva, con cruda honestidad. Amelie, la protagonista, está decida a entender que fue lo que salió mal, a entender su dolor para poder superarlo. Para ello decide armar un mapa de recuerdos y recorrer cada punto donde Reese la haya hecho llorar. Es una historia difícil, donde la intensidad va en crescendo, con alta carga emocional y, me atrevo a decir, no para todo público. Afterwards, puzzled Amelie decides to revisit all the places she cried when with Reese and in the process of doing so, and replaying events with the benefit of hindsight, begins to realise that consistency is a highly underrated love trait, especially when compared to lying, cheating and the trauma of abuse.

tw: sexual assault, controlling relationships, emotional abuse and manipulation, gaslighting, social anxiety, cheating, ptsd Because of that, it took me a bit to get into the story. Nevertheless, I definitely wanted to finish it and over the course of the book, the story started to get better, especially the last part of it. I definitely got emotionally connected to Amelie, understood how she felt and was very proud as she started to understand that all of what happened wasn’t her fault. The way Reese treated her started to make me feel angry and I just wished I could tell her to run away from him. Crying is a very obvious sign that something isn't going right in your life. You should not ignore tears."

These useful springboards for debate and learning contain short, relevant extracts from the book along with a selection of thought-provoking discussion questions and flexible activities that include roleplay, vlogging, mind-maps and memory maps. The Places I’ve Cried in Public isn’t a love story, but it’s a book that talks about love, for sure. What you might mistake for love, but isn’t, the all consuming feelings of getting slowly trapped into a relationship and, before it’s too late, before you can or are really managing to listen to your gut, you’re in too deep. I loved the discussions on that, I loved how it opens up an important, important conversation about abuse in relationships, sometimes one that might not seem like it, at first, either. Holly Bourne has once again produced a story regarding young adult issues that is at times hard to read, but is emotive and totally honest... The story follows 16 year old Amelie (who is also the narrator of this emotive read) who has recently moved away from all that she knows due to her parents having to relocate. She is not a confident girl, but truly shines when she plays her music, which is how she gets noticed by Reese. Due perhaps to feeling 'the odd girl out', Amelie falls fast and hard for Reese, ignoring some of her gut instincts and friendly advice. He loves her, doesn't he? He told her. If things go wrong it's her fault, because he said so, he only tells her because he loves her so much! He's so romantic and loving, but is he? Amo a Holly Bourne desde que leí It Only Happens in the Movies, es auténtica, sarcástica y honesta. Así que cuando vi este libro no dudé ni un minuto antes comenzar a leerlo. A pesar del título esperaba algo divertido, inteligente, sí, pero también ligero.

Over the last few years, I've become a big fan of Holly Bourne. Her contemporary novels combine some humour and charm with more serious issues, like abuse, sexual assault, and mental illness. I'm not sure which I'd consider her "best" work, but The Places I've Cried in Public was certainly one that shattered me. Amelie is just starting to make friends when the whirlwind that is Reese enters her life. Alfie appears to be distancing himself from her, and Reese says and does all the right things. He makes her feel intoxicated, not like the steady love she had before. She ignores the warnings of her new friends, and jumps in head first into a new relationship. When I am rating this book - it is entirely based on how I felt about it. I don't want to talk about the characters or the writing. And this line - just hit me so hard. The trademark heartbreaking Holly Bourne moment I’ve come to expect near the climax of every book happens here too, of course, when Amelie visits her old friends in Sheffield and Everything Goes Horribly Wrong. One reason I read these books so fast is simply because I need to get through them as fast as possible, like ripping off a band-aid, because these are emotionally draining books. And yes, Amelie certainly makes mistakes—she is, like all of us, flawed on top of being young and inexperienced in these things, and I appreciate that we get lots of facets of her character. She screws up bad with Alfie; she gets her former best friend upset … it’s a whole thing. There are a few other details that really make this book stand out. I think this book is a very important contemporary novel, but I cannot say I enjoyed reading it. I think I need to say straight off the bat, that the synopsis of this book is quite vague and it makes it sound essentially just like a break up story; but I must say that in my opinion this novel is a very tragic story of a rape and abuse victim coping with PTSD.

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my only complaint is that reese was literally weird and unlikeable from the start and i wish holly bourne would've made us fall for him along with amelie at first. (i mean he called her "my canary") that way the reader would've felt themselves more in amelie's position. amelie was relatable anyway and i love her. the side characters are rather shallow, but since this book 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗲, it didn't bother me. this is amelie's story, not anyone else's and especially not reese's. i love how amelie shows remorse, not trying to shove the blame away, while also knowing it is reese, who is to blame. The “it” that I’m working through now. The messy line of biro. The dots on a map where you made me cry – I’m sure it’s all my fault somehow. If only I’d done things differently. Been… less me, then I wouldn’t have driven you away.

If the focus really is on Amelie and Reese’s relationship in this book, I liked the place the secondary characters took in the story. From the caring music teacher to the friendship Amelie develops, destroys and mends with Hannah, I appreciated seeing this very much, as well. I can take my journey and my scars and I can use the lessons they gave me to ensure my future path has fewer tears in it. There’s a trail of salt across the country, from the tears that rolled down my cheeks, but it ends here. This week I have chosen to read The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne from the YA Book Prize Shortlist 2020. This is a story of Amelie and the boy she loved first (Alfie) and the boy she loved second (Reese). It is the story of Amelie’s journey through the locations that she’s cried to discover why loving Reese was so painful, confusing and frightening and not at all like loving Alfie, who was safe, comforting and gentle. the scenes when reese was worst to amelie are never shown like the others are. on the one hand, i wish there would've been more of that, but on the other hand i love how amelie maybe doesn't show us those memories because she wants to believe reese is a good person for the longest time.I personally related to Amelie in a number of ways. Both of us are Yorkshire girls, both of us left the comfort of the world we knew to go to the south of England where people say "bath" like "barf", yet make fun of our accents, and don't know that gravy on chips is the best thing ever. For Amelie, though, the change was much harder. She left her friends and loving boyfriend right in the middle of her A levels, out of necessity for her dad's job. She went to a new town and school where she had no friends, no support group, no one to "get" her and make her feel important. This delicate novel explores a concept that is rarely touched upon in YA books and it's done in such an exceptional way. The book is told through two different timelines, a before and after if you will, and I believe it was the right choice to tell this story in the best way possible.

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