Finding Audrey- Sophie Kinsella

 

The Blurb

 

Audrey can't leave the house. she can't even take off her dark glasses inside the house.

Then her brother's friend Linus stumbles into her life. With his friendly, orange-slice smile and his funny notes, he starts to entice Audrey out again - well, Starbucks is a start.And with Linus at her side, Audrey feels like she can do the things she'd thought were too scary. Suddenly, finding her way back to the real world seems achievable.

Be prepared to laugh, dream and hope with Audrey as she learns that even when you feel like you have lost yourself, love can still find you . . .

The Review

I really wanted to love this book.  Firstly, because it's a YA book about mental health, and the more of those that are out there, the better.  So many young people (and not so young people too) experience anxiety and depression and it's really, really important that protagonists also face these challenges, and overcome them.  The second reason I wanted to love this was because of Sophie Kinsella.  I've been a fan of her writing for many years and thought her fast-paced narrative and distinctive voice would translate well to the YA market.

Audrey is a likeable character.  She's definitely slightly kooky, and not purely because of how her experiences have affected her outlook.  She's part of a crazy family for one thing.  Her Mum lives her life by how the Daily Mail portrays 'normal' and her elder brother Frank believes he can make a living as a professional gamer on the international circuit. 

It's through Frank's love of gaming that Audrey begins to gain confidence.  Slowly and cautiously, she befriends Linus, one of Frank's 'team'.  He understands her, patiently giving her the time and space to reach out when she feels able.  It's touching to read their story and see how Audrey grows in her ability to communicate, trust and, ultimately, love.

So, the story itself was fine.  And I found myself racing through the book, so it obviously had plenty of the trademark zippy dialogue, off-beat characters and slapstick humour for which Kinsella has made her name in the romcom market.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't get past one rather annoying feature- although Finding Audrey is set in Britain, it really does read as though it's American, particularly in the dialogue.  If it was only in some sections, I might have been able to look beyond it, but there were times where I really had to remind myself that this was UKYA.  Maybe it's deliberately been given an American feel to appeal to the US market, I don't know.   But it didn't sit right with me, and to some extent spoilt my enjoyment of Sophie Kinsella's otherwise successful journey into a new genre.

Overall, I'd probably still recommend this book, especially to teen readers.  However, I can't help but wish it had a strong British identity and a traditionally English voice to match the plot.  I didn't love this one...but I'm sure it'll do well.

Finding Audrey is released on June 4th, published by Doubleday.

With thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

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Billy the Goat's Big Breakfast-Jez Alborough

If you read any picturebooks, it is likely you will be familiar with the work of Jez Alborough.  His successful Duck in the Truck series along with the Eddy and the Bear series are revered within the genre, and the bestselling Bobo books are delightfully simple with enchanting illustrations. Hug is one of my favourite children's books and I have so many happy memories of snuggling up with my son reading it at bedtime.  Even now he refers to it as 'the sad Bobo book' because I always get tears in my eyes when reading it because the illustrations are just exquisite. 

Billy the Goat's Big Breakfast is the sequel to Nat the Cat's Sunny Smile and has the same characters sharing adventures.  Greedy Billy can't wait for his breakfast at Nat the Cat's house.  He is ravenous!  But wait he must as it isn't yet ready.  However, he sneaks a bite of the bread dough and soon his tummy is swollen.  What will Nat the Cat say?

Written in a charming rhyme, children will love this book.  It is has large, bold illustrations which make it perfect for sharing 1-1 or as part of a class/group.  The tale promotes friendship and understanding and has a moral message alongside Alborough's trademark humour.  It also has the additional feature of a song for children to join in with-the music and lyrics are in the book and can be downloaded from the author's website.

My judgment?  Another cracker from Jez.

Billy the Goat's Big Breakfast is out now, published by Doubleday.

8.5/10

With thanks to the publisher for providing me with a review copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The Tragedy Paper- Elizabeth LaBan

The Tragedy Paper by Elizabeth LaBan is essentially a coming of age tale.  It is a young adult novel, but may also appeal to adults.

Duncan, a student boarding at Irving School, has been allocated the undesirable room at the end of the corridor.  Tradition dictates that every year the previous resident of the room leaves a present for the person moving in.  Outsider Tim has left Duncan a gift of CDs, and as they are played we learn about Tim's infatuation with Vanessa, his experiences as an albino and his involvement in a tragic event... 

 

The Tragedy Paper is a brilliant story.  Mysterious and intriguing, I found it hard to put down-I just had to know more and reach the conclusion as quickly as possible.  I loved the idea of learning about the past via CD, and thought it a new and interesting way to compose a  dual narrative story. 

 

Elizabeth LaBan climbs inside Tim and Duncan's minds and I was transported back to being an awkward teen, which actually made my chest tighten with the memories of longing and the desire to 'fit in'.   I am sure adolescents reading The Tragedy Paper would be able to relate to the characters- the popular guy, the 'freak' , a hot girl, an inspiring teacher...all are there, as they are in schools the world over.

 

As mentioned previously, The Tragedy Paper is a coming of age story focussing on first love and relationships with peers.  Beautifully written and highly readable, I thought this was an outstanding debut novel.  I would definitely recommend this book and will be eagerly waiting more YA novels by Elizabeth LaBan.

 

The Tragedy Paper is out now, published by Doubleday.

 

8.5/10

With thanks to Doubleday for providing me with a copy of The Tragedy Paper in return for an impartial review.
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I was keen to know more about how Elizabeth LaBan started writing and particularly how The Tragedy Paper came into being.  Here is what she said...

'I recently cleaned out my mother’s apartment to help her downsize to a smaller place, and I realized that I have been writing my whole life. I found a silly book I wrote in third grade called Me, in which I talk in great detail about my love of cats. I found the attempts my friend and I made at creating a cool kid detective character. It was in a big, brown envelope with the words Chopped Suey written in crayon. Inside, though, were examples of a lot of cover designing and not much writing. I found endless love poems, mostly prose poems, that I wrote in high school and college, reminding me about all the relationships that didn’t work out (I can now say thankfully!). It was amazing to see my writing history in one place.

I have also always loved reading. I remember being on a trip with my parents, I must have been eleven or twelve, and I was reading a book about a group of kids who had been kidnapped. I had been forced to leave the book behind so we could go out to dinner, and I could barely stand to sit through the meal. All I could think about was the book and the characters and what was going to happen. There were many others that I couldn’t stop thinking about, too. In fact, I wrote in the acknowledgments of The Tragedy Paper that reading S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now truly changed my life and made me want to be a writer. For thirty years I thought about creating a world in the same way she and the other authors who had grabbed me over the years had done.

As far as The Tragedy Paper goes, a number of things came together at once: my agent encouraged me to try my hand at a young adult book; I read, also at my agent’s suggestion, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther; and I started to think about how that famous tale could be modernized. It was about that time that the world of the Irving School started to spring to life in my head. Before I knew it, Tim was traveling to New York during that snowstorm, and Duncan was walking under that archway…'