A Tiny Bit Marvellous | Dawn French | Review
French has created a family out of four very different characters. However the voices in the story are mainly focused upon three of these, there is the Mum, Mo who is going through a mid-life crisis and can't not talk to her teenage daughter without having a huge argument. Dora the self obsessed teenage who is convinced everyone hates her and that eating only white foods will make her loose weight (that includes marshmallows, white chocolate and icing). Finally there is Mo's son, the camp, kind-hearted and over the top Peter who has renamed himself Oscar.
The story line itself I found enjoyable, French touches on some very dark and disturbing issues which can effect family life, from affairs to the dangers of talking to strangers online all whilst keeping the story relatively lighthearted and moving along at a reasonable pace. I did not however see the 'extremely funny' side of this book which is quoted on the cover. I find French to be hilarious and extremely entertaining and assumed her books would be the same. I was surprised that her humor has not lit up this book.
I absolutely adored Oscar as a character, he was sweet and caring and his insatiable use of vocabulary was gripping and a delight to read. This of course was in contrast to the vocabulary used in Dora's chapters. The tiring use of swear words, repetition of 'like' and dire teenage language nearly made me put the book down on several occasions. I found myself skim reading her chapters as much as possible to just get them over with.
As I said I liked the story line, but lack of humor and over use of swearing and teenage speak killed this book for me. I'll give it 3/5 and I think that is being being generous.
This post was written by regular reviewer Laura, get to know her here.
Image from Goodreads
Oh wow, you'd think this would be a really funny book because of Dawn French. I was thinking of reading this, however might give it a miss now! x
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