Recently, I finished reading the novel Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella, a 286 page realistic fiction book. Sophie Kinsella is a #1 best selling author and she also wrote the Shopaholic book series that is also a very popular series. Finding Audrey  was published recently in 2015. I chose to read this book because my friend read it and I read her letter essay. She also said it was really good and it also looked very interesting.

In this novel, a 14-year old girl, named Audrey who has an anxiety disorder that prevents her from living a typical teenage life outside and with her friends, she wears dark glasses because she can stand that people can see her eyes. She meets regularly with her therapist, Dr. Sarah, who is one of the few people who actually understand her. When Audrey meets her brother’s friend, Linus her whole world changes and she suddenly wants to make progress in her recovery from her anxiety disorder. Audrey instantly connects with Linus and she tells him all her fears and actually lets him help with her recovery. With all of this going on with Linus, her brother, Frank, is obsessed with video games, specifically a game called LOC. Frank is practicing with Linus for an upcoming video game tournament that Frank and Audrey’s mother thinks is complete nonsense and that Frank should have a better hobby than video games. Old friends come back into Audrey’s life that changed her life before, will they do the same again? Will Linus be good for Audrey and her family or bad?

I really liked how the author wrote the story. Audrey was at her therapist’s, Dr. Sarah and she told Audrey to start making a movie and filming around her house, so she can become more comfortable with people around and interacting with them, Dr. Sarah also tells her to interview some people to also help her become more comfortable in those type of situations. In the book, the author writes those parts in as film transcript, that told the what people were saying to the camera and the actions. I really liked this because it made the book more interesting to read and follow along with. This also was really interesting because the camera and the film transcript caught parts of Audrey’s life that usually an author wouldn’t use in their story. I liked this because this part of the book was different from any other book that I have read before. Also, I liked it because it told the story in a more interesting way and, personally when I  was reading this novel I would always look forward to when the film transcript pages would come up. Audrey called her film “My serene and loving family” which I thought really connected to the plot because her family, especially her mom really wasn’t serene because Frank would always be playing video games.

The character development throughout Finding Audrey made the story more interesting to read and to see what would happen at the end. For example, in the beginning Audrey would never go outside and she didn’t have any friends that understood the position she was in and her condition. In the middle, Audrey started to become more comfortable around Linus, who had completely changed her life in the end. Audrey also wanted to make progress on her graph, something she created with Dr. Sarah that shows the ups and downs in her recovery. She wanted her graph to only be going up and not having any downfalls, which this goal didn’t help her really. By the end of the novel, Audrey was completely comfortable around Linus, and she was going to Starbucks, another goal Dr. Sarah had set for her. Audrey had developed so much throughout the story and this made the plot more interesting. Also, the character development shows how the title relates to the story.

I thought that the title, Finding Audrey, is a really good title for this book because it shows, like I said before, the character development. Throughout the whole story it was obvious that Audrey was finding herself and becoming who she really wanted to be. She wanted to be normal like everyone else and she wanted to go outside and go to Starbucks but she couldn’t. Throughout the story Audrey is finding out that she doesn’t want to be scared of interacting with people anymore she wants to be able to talk to other people and go out to places with Linus. This title was really good and related to the story because she was finding herself throughout the story and she was doing this with the help of Dr. Sarah and especially Linus.

One quote in the book that I really liked was close to the end when Audrey had found out that her life isn’t always going to be perfect like a straight line going upwards, which is the lesson she learns in this novel.

Sophie Kinsella writes, “I think what I’ve realized is, life is all about climbing up, slipping down, and picking yourself up again. And it doesn’t matter if you slip down. As long as you’re kind of heading more or less upwards. That’s all you can hope for. More or less upwards.” I liked this quote and included his quote because it showed the main lesson that Audrey learns in the novel. Also, it showed the way the author writes and I really liked the way this author wrote. I would rate this book a 8 out of 10.

Sincerely,

Katharine Burris