I have a feeling I used to own this book, decluttered it, found it in a charity shop years later, and... am now going to declutter it again.

It's an OK Jacqueline Wilson. Em's dad runs off with another woman, Em and her little brother and sister do their best to muddle through the aftermath.

The main three things that mean it doesn't click for me are

- the theme about Em being really fat. I mean, it's not terrible to have a story that is 'if you eat less chocolate and exercise more you will lose weight', but there's enough negging on fat people, I'm not particularly interested in reading more.

- the meta nature of JW writing a book where the heroine is obsessed with JW, and the big Happy Thing that happens is going to a JW book signing.

- the rubbish dad is just such a caricature of a rubbish dad. Everything he does is ridiculously terrible - leaving them on Christmas day, abducting the children to the seaside without even a text to their mum who is expecting them home, etc etc. I think I could just about stomach this (it is a children's book, things are allowed to be a bit black and white) if it wasn't for the ending, where he has a change of heart and comes back to them at Christmas. Honestly, it's infuriating, she should DTMFA. ( )

A fiction tale which deals with the aftermath of a family breakup. The main character has two younger siblings. Probably best suited to Y7-9 girls. ( )

I am in love with this book and I love Jacqueline Wilson stories!

this book is good and bad in one way ( )