Lola Durand hates her stepmother. It's a cliché but it's true. Lola Durand can't get through to her father. He never wants to talk about the things that matter: why they had to move to Paris, why he had to marry evil Agatha, and how they can get through the heartache of her mother's death together.
If he won't listen, she'll show him. She'll show him the truth about his new wife and then her life can go back to normal, just the way she likes it.
Lola Durand knows a secret about her stepmother. She's going to share it.
This is the second novel by Tanya Byrne that I have read (and reviewed). I probably enjoy this book less, but I really like Follow Me Down.
This book is in a diary/confession form from point of view Lola going over the events that lead outcome of the book. Most of the main plot has already happened by the time Lola starts writing. This book has a lot of tropes, but uses them to explore the emotion of the characters.
Lola is a sympathetic character going through a hard time since the death of her mother and her father's half abandonment. She has done dumb stuff, but I feel for her as she is a motherless 17 year old whose not handling her grief well with a bad support system. The adults aren't really better, as they aggravate the situation.
It explores grief and being from a mixed race character, Lola having a white French father and black Barbadian mother (I got this book from library, I might be slightly wrong), without the parent she takes after and feeling disconnected from her father without Mother's presence.
Overall, I give this book 4/5 stars for stolen lippy. This was a decent YA distraction, with complex character and though is filled with medical tropes (this is third book I've read with a coma in the past few months and it's a random first in books), they are used well as away get to the emotion.
