United By Pop received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, all opinions are our own.
Title: All About Mia
Author: Lisa Williamson
Purchase: Available from 2nd February 2017 in the UK and the US.
Overall rating: 4/5 stars
Great for: #releatable coming-of-age stories full of sassiness, humour and trouble!
Themes: Humour, contemporary, coming-of-age, diversity
Review: Do you ever pick up a book that strikes you as completely not your sort of thing, and yet somehow, you find yourself flying through it with a massive grin on your face? Identifying with every one of the characters and bemoaning the fact that the book has ended when it seemed like you only opened it minutes before!?
Well, that’s what happened with me and ‘It’s All About Mia’.
Williamson’s creation of her relatable characters hooked me from the go. Middle child of the Campbell-Richardson family, Mia, is lacking any real direction and internally apprehensive over her future. She expertly deals with these fears by burying them under an overly sassy attitude, provocative confidence and fun-loving disposition. Sandwiched in-between her elder sister Grace – the straight-A, university bound, good child – and younger sister Audrey – who is already pegged for Olympic greatness at just thirteen – who wouldn’t feel the weight of the future settling on their shoulders? And who wouldn’t want to party just to momentarily forget about it all? But when Grace returns homes unexpectedly pregnant and with a boyfriend in tow, is this the start of a shift in their deeply-rooted characters? Or will Mia be pushed even further back in the family’s pecking order of greatness?
This was such an engrossing and enjoyable read! Confident and popular Mia was always fun, always trouble and always unexpected! Reading of the family dynamics from her perspective was sometimes heartbreaking but always injected with a good dose of wit and sarcasm to alleviate any brooding feelings. This light-hearted read did deal with some difficult subject matters, however. How it approached them was from a relatable place that aligned the reader to Mia’s plight and allowed us to share in her grief, her tantrums and her madcap (and often drunken!) adventures in the quest for escapism.
And that is exactly what this book is: pure, blissful escapism! It is fun and enchanting and vivacious. And yet it is also deep and poignant and hard-hitting.
Despite the heaviness of some of the topics broached, it is done so in such a way that I feel I have come away from reading this as a better and more understanding person without exactly knowing why or how! The character-led narrative allowed the plot to be action-packed and yet allow this action to be second-place to the learning process and character progression that both Mia and the reader undertake.
Deceptively deep and charmingly endearing, ‘All About Mia’ has it all!
Incredible! This blog looks just like my old one!
It’s on a completely different subject but it has pretty much the same page layout
and design. Excellent choice of colors!