Like Other Girls by Claire Hennessy

Lauren attends St Agnes's a posh girls school her mum is the head teacher of which causes issue for her as home issues get dragged into school later in the book.

Her old best friend Steph is transgender becoming Evan and through flashbacks to the past and events between herself and Steph show us a whole new side to their relationship as more than friends.

Lauren herself is a cis girl and is a member of a local LGBTQIA group where she makes good friends with Ellie and Steph also used to attend their meet ups until things became awkward between the pair.

In the book we early on see reckless sex and heavy drinking mentioned as she falls in with boyfriend Justin and his friends whom are scum in the language they use about Lauren. Justin is a flake of a boyfriend and coldly cuts her out of his life as she desperately tries to contact him as she suddenly realises she's late and now pregnant.

We see her battle with abortion and where to get one as she lives in Ireland and soon outs a clinic to a newspaper whom blast the story. She also flees to England to seek an abortion over there as her only resort which sees her use devius ways to afford it.

All this time though, she keeps it to herself and confides in no one and starts drinking more and more until she attends therapy and finally opens up to how she truly feels about everything that's happened in her life.

In the upcoming school musical she has to play a man singer which angers her as she watches the other girls get better roles she wished for but she turns the situation around after confiding  in her friends about the newspaper story on abortion not being fair was through her and so the play becomes her own.

This was a hard novel to get into but eventually it picked up after about one hundred pages and more drama was thrown in from the abortion perspective. While a good book with that storyline, I did wish for more with her friends and their love lives as mostly it seemed confusing to keep up and would've preferred it to be a little easier to follow who was what and  with who. I do commend it as a good novel about LGBTQIA issues but for me I need  to possibly read up on the more newer types of sexuality to appreciate it more, the abortion side was well played out as it's real life events still as people fight for abortion to be legal in Ireland and so is doing well raising further awareness in the future generations.