I absolutely loved this novel because of how honest it felt. Normal People depicts the quiet but everyday realities of love, mental health and the challenges normal people go through. Although the two characters, Connell and Marianne, are close, their relationship is complicated by secrecy and miscommunication, especially in high school, when Connell hides their relationship to protect his popularity. Later, when they both attend the same university, their social positions reverse, creating new tension. Author Sally Rooney does an excellent job of portraying their varying emotions as what they truly are: messy and often unspoken.

The story follows these two best friends who met because Connell’s mother works for Marianne’s family. Marianne is straightforward, a little socially awkward and not very liked at their local high school; Connell is the opposite. He’s captain of the soccer team and a professional partygoer. We follow both characters since the novel is written in third person. I personally loved that we get to see inside the mind of each character. I felt that I became a part of the emotional rollercoaster and messy moments of their life.

I especially liked how the novel skipped through time periods between the two characters’ experiences, moving from their secret relationship in high school to their more emotionally intense connection at university. To me, it showed how their feelings stay strong even when their lives keep changing.

Through topics of love, depression, loneliness and seeking approval, we get to see how two different characters may seem to react in their own unique way, but it could just be a reflection of any normal person out there. Rooney doesn’t avoid the hard topics. Instead, she embraces them, allowing the readers to get an insider’s perspective of them. Mental illness is brought up often: Connell deals with a low but regular presence of anxiety, which developed into a depression after one of his close friends died by suicide. The novel was written in a way that carefully highlighted the small and big effects of his condition, allowing me to better understand what the character was feeling than other novels I’ve read. With Marianne, who lives in an abusive household, we see how she deals — or doesn’t — with the situations that are thrown her way. As a reader, I really appreciated that Rooney faced these difficult topics, not avoided them.

I had never read a novel set in Ireland before, so I found it really interesting to see both their small hometown and later their lives as students in Dublin, especially since each setting affects how confident and accepted they feel.

If you’ve read the novel and want to see more of their story, the story was turned into a successful TV series in 2020. The series did a really good job at highlighting the very open and honest relationship between the two characters.

Overall, I would rate this novel a 7/10. I would highly recommend this novel to people who want to feel both sad and happy when reading and those who love a good coming-of-age romance story.