Post by janetandjohn on Feb 16, 2019 9:56:25 GMT
On the surface, this is just a YA read about two teens who despise each other, but have to live under the same roof. However, there is much more to this one. Stewart's Mum has died of cancer, and after a year or so, Dad takes up with a friend of the family and the decision is taken to move in with her. Her, and her daughter Ashley, who gets poor grades in school, and could only be described as an airhead - wanting people to like her, wanting them to like her better than anyone else, wanting to be in with the in crowd.
So Stewart and Ashley will have to make the best of a bad job, won't they? Stewart is all brain and for a while it seems that Ashley has hardly any brains at all. Things go wrong, they get worse. Ashley is ashamed that her Dad left her Mum not for another woman, but because he is gay! No-one at school knows. Stewart has no friends at this new school, he is bullied. He misses his Mum dreadfully and Ashley just does not understand.
This is a very clever approach to the problems that adolescents may come across. Told in alternate chapters by Stewart and Ashley, you will see how the same things have differing points of view. Bullying, homophopia, death, grief are covered here, plus all those adolescent feelings about life in general, but written in a brilliant way that was for me as an adult, easy to read, but covered subjects that I had come across in my own life. And for any YA, characters that they come across every day at school, and those subjects they may not know much about yet, but need to.
