THE PLOT: ‘Think Again’ by Jaqueline Wilson is a contemporary adult novel about the characters in her beloved teen series, Girls. Being an adult isn’t what Ellie Allard dreamed it would be when she was fourteen. Though she’s still best friends with Magda and Nadine, her love life is non-existent, she’s lost her job as a cartoonist for the Guardian and her daughter has just moved to university. On her 40^th birthday, Ellie decides it’s time for a change and starts dating someone from her past.

SUMMARY:  I hate to say it but this book didn’t work for me. It was just…boring. Jacqueline Wilson is known for tough themes and harrowing plot twists. Her young characters have a lot thrown at them (homelessness, abandonment, parental divorce, death etc.) and they have to navigate the emotional fallout of such big life changes. However, in this adult book there’s just not enough happening to Ellie to warrant any big feelings. The problem is that Ellie has, objectively, quite a nice life. Throughout the book she doesn’t make many active decisions and her issues are mostly internal, so she appears a bit neurotic and bumbling. This is somewhat true to the character I remember from childhood, but the plot didn’t match her interiority. Overall, this book had so much potential and I wish it had been taken in a different direction. Ellie doesn’t feel like the complex, strong, 40-something-year olds in my life. She’s not juggling a million things, trying to be a caregiver to both her children and her parents while working full-time and navigating some of life’s biggest milestones. The character and the novel falls flat, which is why I’m giving it two stars.

GOOD BITS: I liked that Ellie, Magda and Nadine were all living “un-conventional” lives. They each showcased different attitudes to relationships and children, which is refreshing when depicting women of their age. There is also a new friend in the book, who is a lesbian. Although their meeting and friendship felt forced, I liked the character and what she eventually represented. I feel like making this book multi-POV and including Nadine and Magda’s perspectives could have been interesting because they seemed to have more going on in their lives. Both of their storylines felt complex, somewhat sad and unfinished.

NOT SO GOOD BITS:  If you zoom out of this book, there’s not much external plot happening. She dates someone, decides to write a new comic, makes a friend and her dad has a heart attack. Most of these events aren’t causal and there’s little active decision making on her part. And, when things do happen to her, there are no real stakes. For example, when she loses her job the only thing she loses is status and pride, which are both internal. She still has her salary as a teacher and there is no external consequence, like the fear of losing her home or being unable to achieve a specific goal.

OVERALL:  I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘Really Good, Actually’ by Monica Heisey, ‘Cat Lady’ by Dawn O’Porter or ‘So Thrilled for You’ by Holly Bourne. I mean, read it if you’re a childhood JW fan and want to satiate your curiosity. But, don’t expect too much from it.

You can purchase this book (with a discount!) on my bookshop.org page.