All My Friends Are Invisible: the inspirational childhood memoir

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Mostly, I am heartbroken for every queer storyteller who has been struggling to find a publisher/agent to publish their story, while this book gets published – presumably – due to what I believe to be a significant social media following.

Rebellious Spirit: Setting gender identity aside, Jonathan Joly is opposed to social norms throughout the book and lives an eccentric lifestyle, also finding his career through unconventional means (as a social media influencer and vlogger). To me, this is wildly unbelievable - maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t be able to describe what happened in my life 2 days ago as detailed as the days in the book are. He shows the beautiful world he retreated to time and time again when life was unbearable for his ‘skin machine’. It's unsettling that he places so much emphasis on materialistic things being for boys and girls, which he says other people put onto him but again these seem innocuous things that I can't imagine anybody else having umbrage with.There should have been alternative pov's In a nutshell we see kid jonthans true self but not adult Jonathan's true self which honestly I would prefer having read. There is so much raw emotion, the telling is beautiful - almost like a child-like narrative voice for his younger years - and I really hope this book helps as many people as possible because the world needs to be more accepting of people like Little Jonathan and Giselle and this might help that happen. Born in 1980 in Terenure, Dublin, Joly was brought up by a mother with ambitions for social climbing — the ascent to be undertaken by her children.

I am aware that the author suggests that people shouldn't seek mental health help as mental health issues "do not need to be fixed, but accepted". Over the next twelve years, as the couple married, had children and moved to the UK, they became one of YouTube's most beloved families internationally. What an utter mess of a book, it’d be better to have been written as a fictional story as none of it adds up! Aspects come across as a very fabricated story, which makes it hard for me to read and take onboard as being factual. It will require grit, hardship, pain and suffering, but the rewards will be great, and the journey will be greater, and the adventures will be endless.My reason for rating this book four out of five stars is simply that I was unable to envision the scenes and characters. Traumatic memories are, by their nature, deeply harmful and traumatic and the human brain usually represses these memories. The more we add and curate a story to become what a reader *wants* the less accurate it becomes to fact and the actual point of the book would be lost.

The anecdotes are extremely vivid and detailed - narrating almost minute by minute, word for word of a day that happened to a 4 year old, over 30 years ago. All My Friends Are Invisible even if you do not share these life experiences, thoughts or upbringing is very relatable for the reader. Most importantly, he introduces us to his invisible friends, and in so doing you may be transported back to the friends you had as a child that no one else could see, and who may have saved you, too. And then it happened, a familiar sensation that Jonathan hadn't had for decades: an out-of-body experience that transported him to another place, the safe place he used to escape to in his mind when he was a boy.I am astonished this has been published and beg anyone who is considering reading it to save their time - it truly is awful. There is a major opportunity missed here because it should have swung back to present day Jonathan but it doesn't so your left thinking what was the purpose of this? This isn't something to accept, it isn't 'other', it has nothing to do with being trans and it seems to be very dangerous advise for one to give. Maybe it's more mainstream now or maybe it was where I grew up but I was rather confused by the entire thing as what the issue was.

Overall it is very confusing and personally I don't think if someone is suffering from MH should read this book as it won't help them. The '80s: Most of the memoir bounces back to reflections on Jonathan Joly's childhood upbringing in the 1980s, with copious 80s-based references; it is juxtaposed with Joly's adult experiences in the digital age as an LGBTQ+ family vlogger. There is nothing wrong with that but it just doesn't add up to the narrative on YouTube or instagram we have been getting which left me feeling like I was missing something.

If we take away the content, which as I state I didn't really understand, rate or enjoy, the main point of a book is to entertain. One should not gender everything these days, but the book feels as if it were the confidences of a woman. It breaks my heart in seeing how much he had to endure in a time where as children we should be loved unconditionally and applauded for being our true authentic selves. It would have been better if it was more explained from present Jonathan connecting to past Jonathan.