Lola Rose

A Review by Nina T. H.

I was searching through the library shelves in the "teens section", when I found a book called Lola Rose. It had a black cover with some colourful illustrations of lipsticks, ribbons and other girly stuff that caught my eye. When I read the back of it, I immediately found it interesting. And when I noticed that Jacqueline Wilson (who I'm a big fan of) was the author, I just knew I would love this book.

The Story
The story begins in a snack bar where Jayni and Kenny's mom wins 10000£ in a lottery. They decide not to tell dad, because they know he would take all the money for himself. The situation seems innocent until they get home to their little apartment. That's when we learn that Dad hits Mom. But Mom is so in love with dad that she doesn't want to leave him. But when he for the first time hits Jayni, Mom takes the 10000 and the kids and the three of them escape to London. They find an apartment and are ready to start a new life. They all get to choose new names. Mom finds this necessary because she does not want dad to track them down. Nikki (Mom) is Victoria, Kenny is Kendall and Jayni becomes the lovely Lola Rose. But living in this new world is not as much fun as Jayni would have thought. She hates her new school, the apartment, Mom's new boyfriend and Mom's new job. And when Mom gets seriously ill, Lola Rose is forced to be much more grown up than she wants to be…

Main Characters
Jayni - Jayni is a very reasonable girl who worries about basically everything. She is the one who has to take care of Kenny, and sometimes she has to take care of Mom too. She is also very shy and does not make friends easily. She always tries to look at the bright side of things and often escape to her own fantasy world where everything's OK. But even when she realizes that the times are getting tougher, Jayni keeps her head together and tries her best to stay strong.

Mom - It comes out very clearly that Nikki has not quite been able to let go of her youth. She is obsessed with her looks and is very outgoing. Her new boyfriend is still a student and Nikki loves the attention from someone younger. Although she may not always be the most responsible person, she loves her children more than anything and takes as good care of them as she can.

Kenny - Kenny is only five years old and doesn't understand the new things that are happening around him. He wants to go back to dad and talks about him all the time. He is very naive and, like Jayni, worries a lot. He is very into his new obsession - sharks - and loves his stuffed animal shark, George, who "follows" him everywhere.

About the Author
Jacqueline Wilson grew up in Kingston, but was born in Bath in 1945. She always knew she wanted to be a writer and wrote what she calls "exercise books" and novels from the age of nine. She started as a journalist in the magazine "Jackie" when she was 17. She started as a full time writer when she had her first daughter, Emma. She has written several books for adults, but for the past fifteen years, books for teens and children has been her main focus. Her books have won awards such as "The Young Telegraph/Fully Booked Award", "The Smarties Prize" and "Book of the Year" at the British Book awards 1999. More than 4 million copies of her books have been sold in the UK and a survey shows that about 50000 copies are sold every month, world wide.

Other books by Jacqueline Wilson: Bad Girls, Girls under Pressure, Girls in Love, Girls in Tears, Midnight, Diamond Girls, Double Act and many more. Source: www.jubileebooks.co.uk

My Opinion
It is not very often a book comes along that has you hooked from the first page to the last one. This was such a book. From beginning to end new problems show up, and you just can't see how things can work out. But even though the story in itself is very sad, Wilson manages to write it in a way that doesn't make the book to "heavy". A line of humour and warmth travels throughout the whole book had me smiling in the weirdest places. It's funny to see how the three main characters go so well together, even though they are clearly three completely different people. The characters are quite realistic and the fact that you can relate to them and understand their way of thinking makes the book very interesting. I especially liked it because of the typical teen problems Jayni has to face; boyfriends, makeup, mood swings, friends, school and so on. It is just so much fun to see if she can deal with it without embarrassing herself completely!

All in all a great book that I would recommend to anyone 12 years of age or older!

Author: Jacqueline Wilson
Number of Pages: 288
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