All I Know Now:Wonderings and Reflections on Growing Up Gracefully - Carrie Hope Fletcher

We all know that growing up is at sometimes, hard. At times we rely on the reassuring words of someone who had walked along that winding road a few strides in front of you and has ended up as a fully-functioning adult.

Carrie Hope Fletcher is that person. Thanks to her massively popular YouTube videos, Acting and Singing, Carrie has become an 'honorary big sister' to hundreds of thousands of young people across the world who turn to her for advice, friendship and, most of all, the knowledge that things will get better on a daily basis. Being the younger sister of Tom Fletcher, the lead singer of Mcfly currently 1/6th of McBusted sounds like the perfect life but even so, Carrie grew up facing problems every teenager/young adult has.

Carrie has created a positive place for young people to connect and share their hopes and concerns online, and now she shares her personal thoughts and experiences in her first book. Part memoir, part advice guide, it includes Carrie's thoughts on some of the topics she's asked about regularly: bullying, body image, relationships and one of the scariest question of all: what does the future hold? With warmth, humour and a sprinkling of hard-won wisdom, Carrie provides the essential tools for growing up gracefully... for the most part.

Being a fellow McBusted/Mcfly fan I grew up knowing the Fletcher family but none of the deep personal  experiences until Tom released a small part of his life in the Mcfly book. This book is so different due to is humour and advice. Watching Carrie on YouTube had often bought me happiness in tough times, or just so I could keep up to date with her. She's played a sister role to so many young people it takes my breath away and even at time Carrie can not see how she is anyone's roll model.

Throughout the book my emotions were riding a roller coaster, I laughed cried and shrivelled up into a ball and wailed like a banshee at times. I somehow always found the will to carry on reading until the end. I'm always touched by the stories of people due to how truly underestimated they are, just because they seem to have abetter life than you or just because they're famous to a point doesn't mean they get an easy life, the book really does show the truth behind it all. From the front page to the final one I imagined it was Carrie reading it to me because they were all her words, I couldn't find one word that didn't feel like she had written to explain something, it all seemed so her.

I fully recommend this to any teenager who has or currently is finding it hard to be a teenager just so they know they are not alone and be able to see things to get better. I also recommend it to anyone who wants a good read because even if you don't think anything in the book could relate to you, you could find something. My hat goes off to Carrie for creating such a beautiful book.

Book Rating /5
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