Scarlett

Hello again! The book today is Scarlett, written by Cathy Cassidy. Twelve-year-old Scarlett lives in England (!!) with her mother, and things aren’t going too well. After being expelled from school (again), Scarlett’s mom has had enough. She makes the decision to send Scarlett off to live with her father in a small town in Ireland (!!!), the same father who left them a few years ago. Needless to say, Scarlett isn’t alive with excitement, especially with the fact that a stepmother and sister are also a part of the deal. Despite her best efforts to get out of it, eventually she’s on that plane and stuck attending a one-room, one-teacher school, where she quickly gets into trouble on her first day. Which isn’t very surprising. But things start looking up when she becomes acquainted with a strange boy living in the woods near the cottage, Kian. They become fast friends, and Scarlett starts to think that maybe things won’t be so bad after all (not that’s it all super-duper for long). I thought the plot was interesting, and the writing was definitely good; the only thing was that it seemed to me that Scarlett was changing from an angry child to a happy one in a surprisingly small amount of time for a section of the book. It just seemed a little unrealistic. But overall, it was a nice read, though I was a little disappointed. By the way, it’s probably geared towards preteen girls.