My Mum Tracy Beaker: Now a major TV series: Amazon.co.uk: Wilson, Jacqueline, Sharratt, Nick, Sharratt, Nick: 9780440871521: Books
I actually received an advance proof copy of this book, but have also bought this one and it arrived on the release day, so happy with that. The book itself is good, there are references to past events (a reference to Tracy Beaker Returns in Tracy’s job history for example), and the first half of the book is excellent, as are the last few chapters. The problems lies in the middle of the book, where they are living with Sean. It goes on for a while, events happening but they are not always interesting enough to want to read on. I read the book for two days before I finally decided to skip towards the end to find out what happened because everything was just the same and I wanted to find out if it would change… Thankfully it did. I have found this more with Wilson’s recent books, such as Katy, where it took nearly half the book to get to the main storyline… The BBC version took just over half an episode, so a sixth of the runtime overall. It was good, but quite frankly I received the book mid-July and still haven’t finished it because I know what happens in the end and every time I go to read those middle chapters I get bored. May just be me, but there we go. Also, Tracy is still very much like she was in the original books and hasn’t matured that much (she yells at a teacher before going for kickboxing classes to sort her anger issues), so if you’re used to a more mature Tracy in the TV series it’s slightly disappointing. However, having said all that, I did enjoy the book, and I liked Jess a lot more than I thought I would. She’s sweet, funny at times and I actually found myself siding with her against Tracy at times because she felt more relatable. She’s a lovely character, and I’d like to see a development of her story some time in the future. I would buy it, but be patient in the middle, as the ending is certainly worth it and not at all what you’re expecting.