London Belongs To Us

London Belongs to Us – Sara Manning

Originality: ♥♥♥♥♥

Quality of writing: ♥♥♥♥

Plot: ♥♥♥♥

Setting: ♥♥♥♥

Character: ♥♥♥♥♥

Overall: ♥♥♥♥

 

[I won a proof of this book via Instagram! Here is my honest review of it.]

 

 

Firstly, this book is actually really, really funny. Like Sunny is an incredible main character – she is strong, determined and has a great sense of humour. What more could a YA reader ask for? The side characters, Sunny’s pathetic boyfriend who is so obviously cheating on her (the whole novel pretty much centres on Sunny hunting him down to give him a piece of her mind) and Sunny’s best mate Emmaline who has a crush on another girl, gives the novel the perfect edge. Not to mention the hilarious French duo Vic and Jean-Lean – neighbours who seem scary at first but turn out to be a complete pair of clowns!

Sara Manning’s writing and plot was artful – somehow taking our MC all around London in the most vibrant of ways (Sunny carried a BROOM everywhere with her and no she is not a witch). Even more incredible was her perfect caption of a multi-race city, a trait that most adult books ignore. There was the obvious racism of side characters but how Sunny deals with it in the most open-minded but wistful way is brilliant.

Despite loving this book, I admit that it was hard to get into at first. There were times in the beginning when Sunny’s dialogue made it sound like she was a granny. My first thoughts were that this was going to be one of those try-too-hard books but boy was I wrong! Make sure you stick through to the end because it certainly was a great journey to be on.

The best thing about the book is that this plot has never been explored before – so five stars for originality. To make another point, maybe a little more critical, even though I know that London is HUGE, I wish Sara Manning had included more on Harrow (Harrow has some great history) rather than just a small mention. That said, it was interesting to learn about the history of London’s other iconic places.

As a Londoner myself, I really enjoyed reading this whilst travelling to and from work on the Metropolitan and Jubilee lines. It was nice to read a YA book set in my home city. And I TOTALLY get what Sunny means by ‘My London’.

Overall, 4 stars.