Glorious Rock Bottom: 'A shocking story told with heart and hope. You won't be able to put it down.' Dolly Alderton

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I read this when I was in my late twenties. I’ve always really admired Emma Forrest as a writer and as a young journalist. She was one of those super-talented young girls who started writing for newspapers when she was about seventeen. I was 30 when I found the first bald spot on my head. I'm not saying I handled it well but I can't imagine how I'd have coped with the news as a teenage girl. Like the main character of Bryony Gordon's novel, my hair was something that people always commented on. I wasn't at Rapunzel levels but it was the thing I got the most compliments for. Cut to a few years later and it's gone along with my eyelashes and eyebrows. My 16-year-old self would never have left the house. I am totally in favour of alopecia awareness in literature. We need more stories that show it doesn't have to be the end of the world. That's what Let Your Hair Down was meant to do. I have met Meghan a few times and I think if you put any family under the microscope, things will come up. I find the media stories are based on a style of journalism that is on its way out, or I thought was on its way out: a nasty pitching of two women against each other who I think get on really well.

I received an electronic advanced reader copy of this book in return for my honest opinion. Thank you to Hachette and Bryony Gordon for letting me read this before it’s release. Is speaking to my mum, who doesn’t really understand mental health, going to help keep my pilot light going, or might it be better to go and speak to my sister, who does understand it? Is cancelling this therapy appointment at the last minute, because I think I might have a cold coming on, going to help keep my pilot light going?I could have been infected by the surgeon who removed my appendix in 1989. I could be in a café and someone could sneeze and the sneeze could contain tiny globules of blood that could land on my eyeballs without me even knowing, your eyeballs being one of the most permeable parts of your body. And who was to say that the disease wouldn’t evolve and become airborne? Scientists, probably, but I wasn’t one of them and I didn’t know any and so off my imagination went, coming up with more and more elaborate ways for me to die before I had reached my thirteenth birthday. A modern take on the Rapunzel story, focusing on our societal obsession with appearance and how social media impacts the lives of teens.

People do feel the same way as you. And what I learned when I started to write about my own mental illness was that it is through all the people who then started to write to me—hundreds of people saying: ‘me too’, if not with OCD, then other forms of mental illness—I realised that it was actually very normal to feel weird. To me, that is why it is so important to talk about your experience in mental illness no matter how shameful it may feel at the time because not only do you then show people what mental illness is, you also give it less power over yourself. I thought the reunion between Jess and Barb was a bit rushed, and it felt like there could have been more apologising Jess's side and reluctance to accept from Barb's side. It felt like she got off relatively easy for the things she did, no matter the motive. The Serena thing being left unfinished is fine as she really only was there to show how much Barb grew throughout the book. The rest being left unfinished is completely fine as we know the most important parts. That being Barb and Jess have made up, her mother supports her (shown by her smiling as she finishes her story and goes to cut the rest of her hair off), Zel is still as kind as ever and the most important thing is that Barb's mindset is completely different and we know that she isn't going to fall into the same traps that she did before. Repunzel is leant into as when we view Barb she tells us how she hasn't been to school or seen her friends in months. And instead of moving the 'captured up in a castle' into a more emotional journey, rather than the physical one that happened in the fairy tale, we are told that she is trapped in a modern tower and it is still for her hair that is the cause of them wanting her. Although it is more the marketing side, and the social media side that they want her for, rather than the more recent adaptation where it had healing powers or the original where her father offered her in exchange for forgiveness over stealing (the adaptation really was Disneyfied compared to the original).So it was a really necessary process, and I feel now a lot further down the path of self-knowledge, or self-care, because of it. I’m not fully there. What do you think about the way that Meghan Markle’s entry into the royal family has played out in the media, especially the apparent fractures between her and Kate? As it so happens, my house is currently in possession of such a boiler, and I have no excuse…I am 41, I own the property and I should have called a repair person weeks ago. Gordon, Bryony (24 April 2011). "How the other half lives". The Daily Telegraph. London . Retrieved 11 July 2014.