Completely Normal (and other lies)

Stella Wilde is sixteen, living with her mum since her dad left to start a new family elsewhere, surrounded by friends who do not treat her particularly well and navigating the low-level chaos of a life that feels slightly out of her control. Her mum, well-meaning and worried, wants her in therapy. Stella wants to feel normal. When she falls into a secret relationship with Isaac, the most sought-after boy in school, she gets a glimpse of something that finally feels like happiness.

Then Isaac is killed in a car accident, and everything changes.

Grace, Isaac’s girlfriend, the girl everyone knows and sees with him, can grieve openly and publicly. Stella cannot. Her loss is invisible, her grief has no legitimate space, and she has to carry it entirely alone. When, almost by accident, she begins to form a real friendship with Grace, the novel tightens into something genuinely complex: how do you build an honest connection with someone when your very presence in their life is built on a lie?

James handles this central tension with considerable skill. The filmic quality of her writing is vivid and propulsive and the characters feel immediately real and this keeps the pages turning in the way that the best contemporary YA consistently does. The novel will appeal to readers who like fiction that deals with family, mental health, love and friendship, and the messy, overlapping business of working out who you are while all of those things are happening at once.

For young adults who have ever found themselves building a friendship on uncertain foundations or not sure of their place in their world, Completely Normal (and other lies) will feel both compulsive and, in the best way, uncomfortably familiar. A promising first novel from a writer with a clear eye for the particular textures of teenage life.