One who isn't confined to her bedroom on the 12th floor of the tower-block flat she shares with her aunt making content.

Perfectly plaiting the brutal world of content creation, family tragedy and alopecia to create an ingeniously inspiring re-telling of Rapunzel, Bryony Gordon’s Let Down Your Hair is simply incredible. After surviving a mental health rollercoaster, after truths come to light, Let Down Your Hair comes to a jubilant, life-affirming climax that will have readers weeping with joy. In 2017 she won the MIND Making A Difference Award for her work in changing the perception of mental health in the media.

Mel's religious parents insist she must keep the baby, whilst Sid's feminist mum pushes for a termination. I’ve since learnt that this is a very common reaction to stress, but at the time I just thought I was a freak. I understand that it’s meant to be part of a wider narrative about stress and mental health in young people. Barb’s complex personal struggles — guilt that she’s ruined her loved ones’ lives, loneliness, lack of self-esteem, depression — are evoked with impactful, empathetic intensity. It’s not that the way alopecia is discussed here is bad, which makes sense given Bryony Gordon’s own experiences.

This is the first novel not aimed at children with alopecia representation, so I was interested to read it. One who isn’t confined to her bedroom on the 12th floor of the tower-block flat she shares with her aunt making content. It just spends so much time talking about the world of social media influencers that the alopecia elements get shoved in at the end. As happy as I am to see alopecia in a novel, I don’t think it’s just an extra complication to this novel.This story skillfully and sensitively manages the emotional debate over the pro's and con's of babies and abortions, not always predictable, and very relatable. And I very much enjoyed attempting to solve the case with Pip (who I now want to be my best friend).

Holly Bourne is a great advocate of young teens reading about difficult issues as a 'safe space' to consider and discuss those issues, this book does a great job in that sphere. A fearsome, remarkably ambitious novel that breaks through the boundaries of the genre to become epic - in all the best senses of the word. In this stunning retelling of Rapunzel, Barb must learn that she is so much more than her hair and that there is no such thing as a happy ending . Barb’s own experience with alopecia is at first a curse and then a wonderful liberation, the catalyst to realising that she has spent much of her young life comparing her insides with everybody’s outsides.

Bryony Gordon is a British journalist, award-winning mental health campaigner and the bestselling author of various books on mental health, including Mad Girl and Glorious Rock Bottom.

Friendless and lonely, living on the upper floors of a tower block with her aunt, thanks to her hair - the fetishized focus of her social media channel - Barb has hundreds of thousands of online “friends”. Exploring depression, anxiety, the generational impact of addiction, and bereavement with honesty and remarkable empathy, it also presents the glory of self-determination and friendship with life-affirming power. The YA fiction debut from bestselling author Bryony Gordon, Let Down Your Hair is a modern twist on Rapunzel featuring a hair influencer who develops alopecia – and her quest for a different sort of happy ever after. Like the main character of Bryony Gordon’s novel, my hair was something that people always commented on. Since the day she was born, Barb’s glorious hair has defined her existence, and the same is true as she turns sixteen.

She gets out her mirrors and combs for a video and sees it … a bald patch the size of a ten pence coin, slap bang in the middle of her head. Mel and Sid are determined to do this together, but they soon discover that pregnancy is totally different for boys and girls. They hope to find the answers they seek, while making new friends, learning new concepts, and experiencing the entropic nature of the universe.