Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson - Review

My friend Helen sent me this book, which was really nice of her, thinking I would like it. Well, wanting me to read it, at least. Like many others my age I read some Jacqueline Wilson when I was young, but I hadn't ever read the Girls series, on which this is based. So I didn't have the frame of reference for this, and maybe it would have helped if I had? I ended up just not really liking this and finding it really weird. I said as much to Helen and she agreed that it was odd, so I'm glad it wasn't just me!

So, the protagonist of the book is Ellie. She is turning forty at the beginning of the book. She wants to spend the day with her beloved daughter, Lottie, who has just started university, but Lottie cancels on her at the last minute. So Ellie goes swimming and she meets Alice. Ellie is the artist of a comic strip that appears in the Guardian - a mouse called Myrtle - which it turns out to have been cancelled by the paper just before Ellie's birthday and Alice knows of it. She ends up dragging Ellie to get the mouse tattooed. Now I am a person with a lot of tattoos and I thought the description of Ellie getting the tattoo was spot on, but I thought the depiction of the aftercare was absolutely terrible! Ellie first of all has a bandage on it, and then she goes swimming about a week later! It's not hard to do your research!

Anyway, Ellie ends up being thrown a surprise party. There's her dad, her stepmum Anna, her brother Ben, her brother in law Simon, Lottie, and her two best friends Nadine and Magda. Then there's a bunch of other people from her life including an old PE teacher Mrs Henderson, a woman who once encouraged her drawing career, and I dunno, a bunch of others. It got confusing. She gets back in touch with her old art teacher, Gary because of this party. 

Ellie, having lost the comic gig, decides to write a graphic novel about elephants. Alice can help her with this, because she has researched elephants a lot. But her girlfriend Wendy doesn't like Ellie at all, which isn't really investigated properly. Ellie then starts a relationship with her old teacher, Gary, which is very weird and creepy and not at all fine! They have really good sex but otherwise he's a bit boorish and annoying. He lectures her. He doesn't like the flat she lives in. She says she 'can't' break up with him but it's like -- why not? You don't owe him anything! Just break it off! She spends literally half the book fannying about with this. 

Then there's Magda and Nadine. Nadine is her 'old self', still falling in and out of bed with loads of men. Magda is pregnant but the baby's dad is Chris, who Ellie and Nadine don't like. They don't like his kids either. But there's no reason given why they dislike him so much. It's very surface.

In fact the whole thing is surface. And as a woman who turned forty in the same year that this was published I did have to think that no, we're not all as vacuous and self involved as Ellie. She had had some genuine trauma in her life but that too was skated over. 

In all I'm giving this two out of five and not a scrap more. 

While We're Young by K L Walther - Review and Blog Tour

Hello and welcome to my blog for my turn on the tour for While We're Young by K L Walther! I am so happy to welcome you here. Please do click around and have a read of some of my other reviews! 

When I read the premise of this book I was really intrigued by it so signed up for the tour. I was lucky enough to receive a paper copy of the book which I've really enjoyed reading and which I will probably keep. This is a really good book and deserves to go viral and have some buzz around it when it's published because it's the cutest type of Young Adult novel. The premise also promised that it's kind of a modern update to the film Ferris Bueller's Day Off which is one of my favourite films, so I was really intrigued to read this! As I type, I am about 80% of the way through so I don't know how the book will end, but I am enjoying it so far and am excited to see what happens at the end. 

There are four protagonists in the book so it is quite complex as they all have a lot going on. They are all seniors in high school. Grace is class president and she's pretty preppy and a good girl .That's why when she fakes illness to skip school one day in her last May of high school, neither of her parents really bats an eyelid. They both have important meetings so they're busy anyway, so they're happy to leave Grace at home. Grace then persuades her best friend Isa to skip school too. She wants to go on a road trip with her. They get Isa out of school and then they turn their attention to Everett. They basically kidnap him from school and the three of them set off to Philadelphia. 

Isa is very popular and very clever and she's headed to Brown University. However her parents really want her to go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, so they're actually a bit disappointed. Everett is the eldest of three siblings and his dad has died recently, so the whole family is struggling to learn to deal with his loss. Isa and Everett used to go out, but when they broke up they stopped being friends too, putting Grace in the middle. Part of her plan for the day is to get Isa and Everett back to being friends, basically because she misses that but also because she and Everett kind of have feelings for each other and she doesn't want to go behind Isa's back. 

Then there's James. James and Grace are siblings and are in the same year at school as there's only about ten months between them. In the past they were very close, but a few things have got between them and now they just wind each other up. James and Isa have kind of started a relationship but they know this won't go down well with Grace so they've cooled off a bit until Grace knows. James is a bit of a troublemaker at school and starts his day with a meeting with the principal. She is less than impressed with him but James does start his day. But then he realises that Grace, Isa, and Everett are all missing from school, so he skips out and goes home, and obviously finds Grace isn't there. 

Because she's in Philadelphia, trying to have a fun day like they all used to go on with Everett's dad. But of course there are so many obstacles in the way... 

I loved all four teens and the very real and many problems that they are dealing with. I won't give spoilers for these but there's lots, but they all felt very realistic. I liked all four of their personalities too, but I especially liked Grace. I had sympathy for all of them. I also loved all the nods to Ferris Bueller's Day Off - like Grace and Isa take one of Isa's parents' cars, and there's a bit where someone appears on the TV, and the local news reporters are called Ferris and Cameron. The school goes wild over the idea that Grace is ill and there's a hashtag very quickly - #SavingGrace. I would recommend seeing the film if you haven't because there were so many little nods which felt like the author paying tribute to a film.

As I said, I haven't quite finished the book but I've really enjoyed it so far and am giving it four out of five. I would definitely read something else by the same author, too! 

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves - Review

My mum said to me last year that she had never read any of Ann Cleeves' books and I thought she would like the Vera series so for Christmas I bought her the first eight books I think, in a lovely set in a cardboard holder. I think it was around £25 off eBay, brand new, which makes it excellent value per book. She read the first book and lent it to me. I've read a few of the Vera books but out of order, so it was weird to go back to the beginning. Especially as the book was printed in 1999 so it's weird how much technology there wasn't around. 

My mum's criticism is that Vera didn't appear until way late on in the book, which she didn't like. She has also never seen the TV show so in one way that helped, because she had no pre conceived notions about Vera here, whereas I definitely always see her as Brenda Blethyn! I'm sad the TV show has finished actually because I've watched it religiously, but I did enjoy the documentary about it and would recommend it for fans. 

Anyway, this book. Three women are arriving at Baikie's Cottage to carry out an environmental study on the area. This is because a local company wants to build a quarry nearby (do you build a quarry??) and these three geologists need to make sure that there's nothing special that would be destroyed. Baikie's Cottage is near to Black Law Farm, where Bella and Douglas live. Douglas has had a stroke and needs a lot of care; Bella is his second wife and dedicated to him. However, at the beginning of the book, when one of the women, Rachael, arrives, she finds Bella dead in the barn.

She and Bella have been close and she is shocked by the apparent suicide. She doesn't believe it, but everyone else seems to. Rachael is reeling from the betrayal of her boss and ex lover, Peter, so she wants to lie low for a bit. She has an eccentric mother, Edie, and she wants to know about her dad, who Edie refuses to tell her about. 

The second woman, Anne, is local to the area but choosing to sleep at the cottage. She is pretty unhappily married to a man called Jeremy, but is also having an affair with a man who has something to do with the new quarry. I don't know, I lost the plot entirely because there were far too many characters and it was hard to keep them straight in my head. I liked her best of the three women I think. 

The third woman is Grace. She's a lot younger than the others and somewhat of a loner. She shares the same surname as the local toffs of the manor up at the big house, but it's not clear at first how she's related, if she is at all. I found her story just quite sad to be honest. 

As I said, there's a ton of characters and then there's another dead body, and it's just very confusing and unclear about who is who and what they've got to do with anything. For that reason I can only give it three out of five. I did like meeting Vera so I will definitely read the rest when my mum passes them on, but I just found this overly long and confusing. There were bits of plot that just went nowhere, and too many coincidences for my liking. I think Ann has got better at these books along the way! 

Our Holiday by Louise Candlish - Review

This is one of those books where nearly everyone in it is a terrible person. I actually don't mind that, because it means that the reader doesn't care enough about anyone, so anyone can be the suspect. But that made it hard to be sympathetic towards anyone, too. 

It's a couple of weeks since I read this book as I'm writing this and I think I've forgotten who everyone is, annoyingly, so let's see what I can dredge up... 

The book is set near Poole, in a village which has a lot of second home owners. Two of them are Charlotte and Perry and their son Benedict, who are from London and who have a shit ton of money. They tend to go to Pine Ridge for the entirety of August. This year Benedict is off at uni, leaving the nest a little bit empty. But he is coming for the summer in Dorset and bringing his girlfriend Tabitha. Charlotte is nervous to meet her, but looking forward to it too. 

Charlotte and Perry's friends, Amy and Lucas, have also bought a second home on the same street. It is much smaller and less grand than Charlotte and Perry's house, and it needs a lot of work, which Amy is going to oversee. Their children are Beattie, who is seventeen, and Huck, who is about fifteen I think? His French exchange partner Julien is also coming for part of the summer. 

Then there are the locals. They aren't happy that so many people from outside of the town have bought second homes there which means that the locals can't afford to rent there anymore and are stuck living in caravans and on people's sofas. They have formed a pressure group, headed by the charismatic Robbie, who is often on the local news talking about the issue. He has a girlfriend and his best friend is Tate, who works at a bar on the beach. They all live in caravans on the local holiday park. Tate's girlfriend Ellie works at the local spa hotel. They need the tourists around even though they have problems with them. 

Right at the beginning of the book Robbie is at the festival that is held at the end of the summer when he notices something happening on the cliff top. Something is sliding... into the sea. The book then goes back in time to show the build up to festival day and everything that happens before the building slides off the cliff. 

Charlotte's house has a summer house that is her pride and joy, so she's a bit piqued when Amy gets one for her house too. Beattie starts to sleep in theirs. Beattie starts a fling with Tate, and she also has a lot of secrets that she is trying to uncover. I didn't think this subplot was dealt with properly, actually. Charlotte and Amy are both yummy mummies who need to get lives and better things to worry about, I think. Benedict and Tabitha are portrayed as clueless Gen Zs who are so 'woke' and who are constantly trying to rile up their boomer/Gen X parents. Perry has a very big secret which is why he keeps on disappearing back to London. He's also an alcoholic. He is thoroughly unlikeable. 

I did have a lot of sympathy for the locals who just want safe, secure housing, and I think this is very realistic and I liked the way it was portrayed. I didn't care about who lived and died, though, which I find annoying. I'm giving this three out of five. 

The Weight of Water by Sarah Crossan - Review

I didn't know there was a Sarah Crossan book out there that I hadn't read! I feel like I've managed to keep up with her stuff quite well, and indeed I had because I had bought this one on Kindle but then forgotten about it and only saw it when I was scrolling through my Kindle at the end of January. Honestly there are way too many books on my Kindle app and while I did thin some out that I think I will never get round to reading, I also feel like I could be reading forever and still not get to the end. Let that be a lesson is not spending just a few quid here and there and instead getting around to stuff I really want to read!

Like most of Sarah Crossan's books, this one is told in verse. It is the story of Kasienka and her mother. They live in Gdansk in Poland with Kasienka's dad. But then one day he leaves for the UK. At the beginning of the book Kasienka and her mother have come to England to try to find him. 

They know he lives in Coventry so that's where they are too. They are living in one room and sharing a bed. There is a man living next door with whom they share a bathroom and with whom they become friends. Cassie is put into Year 7 at her school even though she is almost thirteen, because they don't know her academic skills. After Christmas she gets put into Year 8 and she starts a relationship with a boy at her swimming class, who is in Year 9. 

She is bullied by some of the other girls just because she is different, really. I liked this aspect of the book and really felt for Cassie. Her mum makes her go out at night so they can both search for her dad - a bit fruitless in a place the size of Coventry I think! 

I liked the ending of this book but don't want to give any spoilers. I think this was really good, especially for the middle grade age. A four out of five. 

What Magic Is This? by Holly Bourne - Review

I didn't exactly mean to pick up another book by Holly Bourne straight after The Yearbook, but I was scrolling through my tablet and I came across this, so decided to read it. I needed something quick and this was perfect. It's one of those Barrington Stoke novellas that I love. I've got about four on my Kindle app that I should get to! But here's this one. 

The protagonist of this book is Sophia. She and her friends Mia and Alexis are trying to do spells. They're having a sleepover while Sophia's mum is gone one evening. They are in Year 9 which I really liked, because Year 9 is a difficult year for everyone, girls especially, and I loved the representation here. 

Sophia is heartbroken after the lad she has had a crush on for ages finally asked her out but then chucked her with very little care for her. Mia self harms and wants to stop. Alexis is the least rounded out of the three, which I did feel was a shame, but it is understandable in such a short book. Sophia thinks she is the boring one amongst her friends, but really I don't agree with her at all. 

They decide to cast some spells to try to cure Sophia's heartbreak, help Mia's depression, and help Alexis get over the death of her family dog. What happened with Sophia's boyfriend is told in flashbacks, while the events of the evening are funny and all too believable. 

I sort of felt like this book might have been a bit of a precursor to The Yearbook - not in terms of characters or anything but it had a similar feel, like Holly had cut her teeth on this one before writing The Yearbook. For that reason I really liked it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Yearbook by Holly Bourne - Review

I can sometimes take or leave Holly Bourne, so I wouldn't rush to read stuff by her, but when I was browsing in the library recently for anything new in YA, I came across this and I was really intrigued by the premise. I actually really liked the book and think it's the best thing I've read by Holly. I feel like she's really dug into emotions here and it has really paid off. I hope all her future books are this deep and this good!

So Paige is in Year 11 at school and her life is pretty difficult. At home, she lives with her mum and dad. Her elder brother, Adam, her dad's favourite, has gone away to uni, so her dad is in an even worse mood than usual. The whole household revolves around him and his bad moods. Every time Paige walks into the house she has to gauge the temperature to see if her dad is angry or whether her parents are putting up a good front. Her dad is abusive. Paige sort of kids herself that it's not 'that bad' because he doesn't hit her or her mum, but honestly, it's pretty bad. He's a bad person. He doesn't love Paige or any of the rest of the family at all. Paige cries herself to sleep a lot of nights and she is lonely and sad. 

At school she is lonely too. She had a friend called Ruby who had to move away, and since then Paige has been by herself. She spends her lunchtimes in the library and she is also a journalist on the school newspaper, which she loves. She is friendly with the school librarian who also oversees the paper. But she isn't really registered by anyone in her year. She's just a nobody. She watches all the bullying that occurs in her year - for example when one of the popular boys does bunny ears on a boy called Charlie when they're having their year photo taken - and she records it in notebooks. She has done this for years and years but she has never done anything with her records. 

Two things happen. Firstly, Paige finds some writing in a book and begins a correspondence with someone. They end up meeting and he is Elijah, a boy in the sixth form. My one criticism is that he is perhaps a bit too perfect, but I couldn't even mind because honestly Paige deserves some happiness in her life. He brings her out of herself and they have a lot of fun together and eventually trust each other hugely. Elijah does have problems himself, which I liked. He is very cute. 

Secondly, The Awfuls get put together with the newspaper students to make the year's yearbook for when they leave school. The Awfuls are the top bullies, top dogs of the whole school. There's Grace, lead Awful, Amelia, and Laura. They want to put together pages with memories of each year of school, but the stories and photos they choose are firstly cented around themselves and secondly really mean to anyone else they mention. There are extracts throughout the book so the reader knows that Paige did stand up for herself and everyone else, so I liked knowing that and couldn't wait to find out how we got there. 

I want to describe this book as Carrie meets Mean Girls... it's great. Five out of five from me!