Not for me. I am going to have to search for the word "dystopian" harder in blurbs than I do now. I mainly found this book irritating, unrealistic (as regards parents/feelings rather than the concept of a place to "make" you happy). The only people who appeared to be happy at the end were Lucy and Raheem so the whole project had failed 98 of the 100 intake. Or maybe the point was that we should pretend to be happy for the sake of others, which appears to be the status quo.

I don't think the hiding his nature or homosexuality particularly helped Seb but maybe that was the point of the book also. Or maybe you're supposed to hide that too.

As you can tell I wasn't entirely sure what the point of the book was other than to enrage me and wonder why everyone is so obsessed with being happy. Its a purely western concept that we deserve happiness. Why not just do what puts a smile on your face for however brief a time?

The part of the book that I did enjoy was the autobiographical part at the end. It made me glad that Josh Silver enjoys writing. I hope he continues to enjoy it and is a success. I don't think he was writing for me so I'll give the next book a miss thanks. My advice to myself for being happy - stop reading dystopian novels.

The narration was good though. Huw Parmenter does a fine job of various accents and a stellar job of irritating teenage girl squeak. His vocal chords must have hurt after intoning Eleanor for more than a second or two.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bolinda for the advance review copy.

I LOVE that we were given a queer male main character and I wish for more of them in books like this! In my opinion, it’s just too often straight girls and the story about Seb and his character was just so refreshing in that regard that it made me giggle.

Unfortunately, I don’t find the statement „Like Hunger Games but better“ on the cover appropriate. On the one hand, it’s too judgmental and subjective a statement, and on the other, the stories and characters are just massively different. In my opinion, you can also promote a book/audiobook with its own qualities and don’t have to resort to such an inappropriate comparison.

The pacing of the story was wonderful; everything started slowly and just got more and more oppressive as time went on. Seb was also wonderfully chosen as the protagonist. He has such a fascinating and human and approachable character that I immediately found myself empathizing with him. Seb is just SO far from perfect and yet not pitiful, ( just a typical, realistic teenager) that I couldn’t help but like him.

As is often the case, the „love story“ / „attraction“ went far too fast for me and I couldn’t follow it all at all. I wonder if sometimes it wouldn’t be better to just leave things vague (without any intimate things happening) and leave the reader alone with their imagination. But maybe emotions are formed differently in such extreme situations than under normal circumstances. I don’t know.
The story itself was exciting and I liked the concept extremely much.
Judging by the ending, I suspect a second book and I’m very, very excited <3


The audiobook is really wonderful; Huw Parmenter reads drop-dead good! ( Although a little slow - I listened to the book at 1.25x speed and that was perfect for me) I love his courage and creativity when it comes to voice variety. But not only different voice ranges are used because Huw Parmenter also establishes different accents for characters, which is nice. For non-native speakers sometimes difficult to understand, but doable. I have to say, however, that it was exactly this courage that drove me crazy at times.
In some situations, you can hear him swallow or it just sounds salivating. It FITS the situation, but ... for every noise-sensitive person (like me) it is pure torture and I unfortunately almost had to throw up whenever that happened ... (and I would have liked to stop the audiobook, although I found everything else great).
What I really liked, though, was the linguistic finesse with which Seb and his insecurities and fears were portrayed. When the voice suddenly became so high-pitched and squeaky and anxious .... God, I got goosebumps!

🙂🙂🙂BOOK REVIEW - HAPPY HEAD by Josh Silver AKA @smudgecotton🙂🙂🙂

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Thank you @netgalley @bolindaaudio and Josh for providing me with a copy of the audiobook for review. The British narration to this was perfect.

This is a stressful book! My lord this was stressful. I pulled waaaayyyyy too many 'wide eyes' faces pretending to stress connect with an invisible person whilst reading this. But of course, stressful in the 'completely invested' way which I am sure Josh was aiming for!

🚨POTENTIAL SPOILER🚨 - don't read and get upset with me.

This book had me on edge the ENTIRE 👏 TIME 👏. The constant 'do they, don't they, go full Squid Games on these kids?' is real. Do they? I don't know!!!!!

I mean, I do know because I have read the book but you don't really want to know if you haven't - where is the fun in that. But like to draw comparisons to The Hunger Games on the cover did NOT help my stress levels.

But my biggest criticism is a bloody cliffhanger like that with zero google-able information showing for 'happy head Josh Silver sequel' !!!!!! I am now following to be informed of any and all updates on this front.

*****Edits - can you believe that less than 24 hours after writing this caption and following Josh, he posts about Happy Head 2!?!?!?! 'Dead Happy' March 2024. That isn't a concerning title AT ALL! 🙃🙃🙃*****