When I first saw this book, I instantly fell in love with it. I’m not sure whether it was the bright, popping colours, the mysterious, smiling girl with her sunglasses or the little personalized coffee mugs on the back cover that drew me initially but after I’d read the blurb, I was completely hooked.

Audrey, our dashingly delightful main character, keeps an internal running commentary on the lives of her family, including a mother that believes everything she reads in her beloved Daily Mail, an older brother addicted to computer games, her quirky, constantly undermined father and her four year old brother, Felix, who finds joy in everything he sees.

Audrey herself has chronic anxiety, finds eye contact and emails hard, but can write notes.  Leaving the house is almost impossible and even when she’s inside, she wears dark glasses. The neighbours joke about it, her parents walk on eggshells around her but all she really wants is to be left alone… until Linus, her older brother’s friend, saunters into the picture. He has a nice smile and writes funny little notes that are delivered to Audrey via Felix’s pocket… and he might just be the one to break the cocoon Audrey has built for herself since “the incident”.

Hilariously quirky and beautifully honest, Finding Audrey is an enlightening journey into the murky depths of anxiety that will make you cringe, laugh, tear up and laugh some more.  Audrey’s recovery is full of ups and downs but as she discovers, that’s what life is all about.

“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.”