a beautiful story told by Holly Bourne. 

a bunch of popular kids at school thinking they are the greatest people in the world, a narcissist father figure in a broken home, an old broken friendship—these are what you'll be reading about (i cried).
 

The Yearbook follows Paige as she survives secondary school as the unpopular student nobody ever notices, on top of being the abandoned second child walking on eggshells to please her narcissistic father figure. she spends most of her time at school in the library—she'd rather be someone unremembered than someone targeted at by Grace and co, the famous kids (read: bully) in her year—so that's how she noticed the (striking) red pen annotations in the book she just borrowed. but the thing is, whatever the stranger has written.... speaks to her. 

Paige is also one of the newspaper committees in charge of the yearbook, and what's unique is that the discussion of school societal hierarchy is reflected in their process of making the yearbook come to life (when Grace and co suddenly wanted to join the yearbook committees to make the yearbook everything about their popularity). 

Holly Bourne's writing is FOR ME. i devour every single word, she perfectly encapsulates the emotions in her writing and i'm ALL for writings layered with emotions. definitely will be reading more books from her.

i'm a huge book annotator (or should i say, sifter? iykyk) so the concept of Paige reading and really SEEING the annotations written by a random stranger in a book she borrowed from the library, is FOR ME. i've always admired the idea of sharing thoughts and profound findings with people close to you, about things that ACTUALLY matter.

while the main message of this book revolves around the societal hierarchy at school, Paige's unstable family dynamic also holds such an important aspect in this story and, is my favourite part of this book in fact (so that explains these whole bunch of highlighted lines that i inserted here). 

Holly Bourne portrays Paige's family with such intricate details of a broken family—how her mother, her brother, and she herself walk on eggshells around Paige's father figure, how their life had to revolve around a narcissistic man. 

i also love how romance is only a subplot in this book, so the book focuses more on Paige and her personal growth. tbh Elijah didn't strike me as an attractive love interest (for me) in the beginning, but i feel like it's meant to be that way so the chemistry between Paige and Elijah could be built and developed by being friends. as the author revealed more and more of Elijah's personality, i grew fond of him for being such a thoughtful and loving human being.

from the moment i started this book, i knew there was gonna be a friendship breakup element but boy was i not prepared to feel that much emotion from the fight. CRY!!! the raw conversation between Paige and Ruby (not a spoiler)... my heart breaks. 

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i think my review does not do justice to this book, it's of course a whole experience when you read the book yourself. Holly Bourne will get you immersed in the story, in her writing, that you can't help but feel emotional and reflect upon different perspectives in life. 

holly bourne, you're one of my favourite authors now. <3