First and foremost, we must acknowledge that I'm almost 20 years too old to be the target audience for this story, so my review is going to be skewed. I read this book as part of a reading challenge, as many of the longer novels published this year didn't appeal to me and Jacqueline Wilson was a favourite of mine in primary school.

I think, had I read this when I was 10 to 12, I would have liked this story quite a lot and would have resonated with some of the messages and themes, having been victim to bullying at that age myself. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it now, I thought there were a lot of positives about it and Mandy's story did still resonate with me in some ways. It was also rather progressive at points given it was published in the 90s.

I think it touched on a lot of deep subjects but didn't go deep enough into them. I understand the depth is limited by the comprehension of a young target audience, but I think perhaps one or two of the issues included could've been explored deeper and the rest excluded. This is the main reason I rated it three stars, as it seems a bit disjointed and like multiple stories smashed into one partially to the detriment of the main storyline, but I think past me would’ve rated this a 4 stars (if I had rated books at that age).