Love & Muddy Puddles by Cecily Anne Paterson

Novellas/Pre-squeals: No 

Series: Stand Alone 

Published by: Cecily, herself 

Genre: Contemporary, Real Life, Young Adult 

Pages: 234 

Source: Sent by author 

Rating: ✬✬✬✬ 

 Synopsis: 

 Thirteen year old fashionista Coco Franks has finally made it into the popular group when her dad decides to move the whole family to the country so they can 'bond'. Social death is looming, her shoes are covered in mud and all Coco wants to do is get herself back to her Sydney friends. After all, things can't get any worse, right?

Thoughts: 

To be completely honest, I was a little nervous to read this book. I'm always nervous when authors send me books to review because I never want to offend anyone. However, I did end up enjoying this more than I thought I would. 

Coco is pretty much your typical teenager trying to figure out who she is and where she belongs. All she wants is to fit in somewhere. I think a lot of people can relate to her. Maybe not her snottiness, but just wanting to be excepted by people, wanting people to like us. It's human nature to want affection from other people. As much as I disliked Coco (oh boy, if she was my daughter, ohhh no...) I felt myself feeling more and more bad for her as the story progressed. I wanted her to know how horrible her so called friends were. 

I gave the book a 4 out of 5 because I feel like there were quite a few grammar mistakes (even though I'm bad a grammar myself, so the things I may think needed commas may have really needed etc). I did enjoy the characters though. I didn't feel much of a connection with Coco's brother Josh, but I did love their Dad if we don't really get to know him. There was just their adorableness about his character. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I thought it was really nicely done. I also really enjoyed how everything turned out. It was a really nice coming of age story, although, I see this story being more for middle school than young adult.