These are some of the quotes I highlighted in this book. And I never mark my books in any way, so that has something to say for the book.

There was only one opinion Charlie had that I really disagreed with. The others show he's a true, imperfect character but he is trying.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is one of my favourite movies and reading the book was both similar and different. Normally I find reading books of movies I've seen boring as I know where the plots going but luckily the movie added and deleted parts of the story and I didn't mind that either when it came to reading the book. As this is a deep story, following even more of peoples difficult and joyous lives than I'd seen from just watching the film. It was heartwarming to read. And a quick read as even Charlie admits, he writes as he thinks, and it gives the book a great unbroken, soul-captivating pace.

I liked this book.

The story never felt like it dragged and I was always engrossed in reading it. But I feel looking back that it lacked main plot points to remember.

It was a great story of questioning if there is a clear line between good and evil, what it means to be in the grey area and I recommend reading it.

*Trigger Warning: anxiety, depression, OCD, agoraphobia and self-harm - I think that's all of them.

There is not much plot to this and it's predictable, but still read ahead at your own risk of some spoilers. Even with what I am about to say, it was an interesting read and a new insight into mental illness.

It sounds harsh to wish worse upon a character. However, I feel the true pain, fear and sadness mental illnesses can cause to someone weren't explored. Don't get me wrong, there was some text I found truly difficult to read, mostly being the self-harm. And I know it would be unreasonable to expect every issue to be deeply explored.
To the point... I felt some scenes were washed over too quickly and spoke about too metaphorically, losing the reader from the moment. Especially for those who may not have ever suffered from a mental illness, I feel this book doesn't educate enough.
And that was the point wasn't it? To educate. This book clearly isn't suitable / safe for everyone to read. But for those who do, I felt more could have been understood.

Also, actual plot wise, not much happened, it could have done with another 100 pages just for some actual story line to be put in there. There was a big dead end, that seemed like it would be something then wasn't.

Nora has been left in a good place - however, it is because of Luke - the love interest. If something were to happen between the,, she would break. I can knowingly say this, as I read it happen when they stopped speaking for 2 weeks and she got really bad. It's a bad and dangerous message to give that you or those closest to you can't save yourself, only a love interest.

Okay let’s just sum up the bad in brief points:

The plot - if that’s what this mess could be called - was bad.

So many sentences made little to no sense, with bad grammar and scenes and conversations contradicted like the author had lost her flow or forgot who said what. There was also constant use of ‘the other girl’ and ‘the other boy’, I kept thinking another person randomly joined the scenes and kept screaming for the author to use the characters names or pronouns. 

All the boys are slim with long hair. While I would appreciate a change from many YA fantasies having many characters with unearthly fitness. This is ridiculous, their trained Shadowhunters and half demon creatures, they’re allowed to have muscle. It was quite constant.

I still don’t like Jace, he’s a mean character, yet I’m supposed to see him hiding his emotional damage with endearing arrogance? No he’s mean and only at the end of this book starting to seem like he’s changing. The Mortal Instruments was originally meant to be a trilogy, so that’s at least 2/3rds of the story line with a unlikable main character.

My pet hate in books/films/tv shows is characters experiencing and displaying emotions only when that plot will prove valid. By this I mean, a character only experienced emotional pain when something would later be proved to have definitely happened, but seemingly felt nothing when the same thing happened but would later be revealed as being a false alarm.

Lastly, oh the casually okayness with incest?! At points Clary and Jace are okay with incest between them. Probably best suited to Game of Thrones and not books read by young teens, just a thought.