All About Mia

Mia is the 16 year old middle child of the family.. Her older sister Grace has always done everything just right and is seen (maybe correctly) by Mia as the favourite who can do no wrong. This even seems to be the case when Grace comes home early from her gap year, pregnant. Youngest sister Audrey is a quiet child, but a brilliant swimmer, training endlessly, and with hopes for the Olympics. Mia, popular and reckless, is constantly in trouble both at school and home, as she compensates for her role in the family, and what she sees as her unfair treatment. She has three good friends but her bad choices alienate them as well for a while. The treatment of family life was particularly well written, with all the chaos, tensions, bickering, exasperated and busy parents, sibling rivalry and closeness. There are some moving and some funny moments. The author in creating Mia has, she says, tried to get inside the head of a character very different from herself, a popular, loud, daring person, 'the coolest girl in the year'. She has been successful in this, and we see the reasons behind many of Mia's worst escapades: getting drunk at her parents' wedding, making a pass (unsuccessfully) at Paul, the much older next door neighbour, and betraying her best friend by trying to have sex with the boy Kimmie secretly adores. I did feel uncomfortable with one or two scenes. Mia, at a nightclub with one friend, encourages two middle aged men to buy them expensive cocktails, and nearly ends up drunk and alone in a taxi with one of them. She is really playing dangerously, and I'm not sure that the book gives quite enough weight to this. The whole novel uses Mia's point of view, which allows us to see how her sarcasm and apparent self confidence are sometimes a cover for insecurity and uncertainty. She may be self absorbed and exasperating, but we can see why. There is a warmth to the tone of the book, and the pace is lively with plenty of likeable characters, as well as dialogue that rings true. This will be a popular choice for older readers who may find a lot of themselves reflected in the characters. 363 pages / Ages 14+ / Reviewed by Carol Williams, school librarian.

Suggested Reading Age 11+