Clare Reviews: Being Miss Nobody by Tamsin Winters

Title: Being Miss Nobody

Author: Tamsin Winters

Format: ARC

Source: Received for honest review

Pages: 384

Rating: 5/5

Blurb: ..I am Miss Nobody.

Rosalind hates her new secondary school. She's the weird girl who doesn't talk. The Mute-ant. And it's easy to pick on someone who can't fight back. So Rosalind starts a blog - Miss Nobody; a place to speak up, a place where she has a voice. But there's a problem...

Is Miss Nobody becoming a bully herself?

This is the most Book-Of-My-Life book I have ever read. There were times where it felt like this book was set in the school I went to (I actually pictured it as that school for basically the entire book. And the depiction of Selective Mutism was so spot on. 

Rosalind, the main character, is delightful. She is eleven which initially worried me as I don't generally like to read from such a young perspective but she was so like eleven year old me that it wasn't hard to get inside her head at all. Tamsin Winters wrote her inner voice so well it was so easy to visualise emotions and the anxiety and frustration of not being able to say anything. I related to Rosalind a lot but also desperately wanted to jump inside the book and protect her. 

Her brother was maybe my favourite character because he reminds me very, very much of my little brother. He was funny and adorable and any scene with him in it automatically made me sit up because I was just so ready for whatever he wanted to do or say next. His relationship with Rosalind was very well written as well. It captured that element of sibling rivalry but also that total devotion between siblings that's unlike any other relationship and I loved their in-conversations and interactions a lot.

The mental illness depiction was, to my experience, very accurate. I really appreciated the line between speaking out and bullying. It's so easy when you see someone standing up against bullies to applaud whatever they say but there is a point at which it becomes bullying in return. And I liked the progression of Rosalind's online experience because whilst I was overjoyed to see her finding people who agreed with her and to see her becoming a little more confident - I was also worrying every time it turned a little bit mean towards the bullies themselves. And again, this is really easy to say as an adult with years of therapy behind her looking at a situation but eleven year old me would have acted a lot like Rosalind I think - if I had a blog then. 

This is a book that I will think about for a long time and will definitely be recommending in future - and whilst it definitely had a huge effect on me now I think it would be even more helpful for anyone of secondary school age who is experiencing something similar. As a slight warning I would say that at times I found the book tiring to read purely because I would get triggered by the anxiety - it was worth it though to read a book that made me feel so understood. 

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