Everyone in the U.K. YA community knows who Lucy Powrie is. She’s been masterminding U.K. YA for quite some time now, and it took over the community when she announced the release of her debut novel, The Paper & Hearts Society.
I admittedly wasn’t sure about picking this book up. I don’t know a great deal about Lucy apart from her Twitter presence and the occasional tweet we’ve replied to, but i know she’s done amazing things for the community, and that cannot be mistaken! I decided to give the book a read because i thought more than anything, it seemed fun.
The story follows Tabby and her life as she settles in a new town for the summer. She’s staying with her grandmother as her parents pack up her old house to move. On arrival, she stumbles across a book club and becomes friends with the group after their first meeting, thus creating The Paper & Hearts Society. As you can imagine, mayhem happens after that!
The first thing i want to say about this book is that it was just pure and wholesome fun. There are plenty of references to other books, TV shows, authors, whatever, which makes it incredibly relevant to now. And the characters bounce off each other so incredibly well that their speech is just fun to read. Which is useful considering they spend the majority of time together in the book. There’s some parties, some road trips and all round summer vibes. It did throw me back a little bit to being a teenager in summer.
Speaking of the characters, Tabby’s friends, Ed, Cassie, Olivia and Henry were absolute wonders. They’re a classic YA bunch of friends, but they’re very soft and easy to read about. I really love groups of friends in novels and this one is no different. It’s a story very much based on friendship and how to fit in somewhere you think you might not. I really enjoyed this about The Paper & Hearts Society.
The writing i found incredibly good for a debut novel. I’ve not read such a well written debut for some time. It flowed really easily and was incredibly easy to read. I managed to get in to the reading zone with it a few times and read it in large chunks!
Admittedly, there were something’s lacking too for me, and a couple of things i didn’t like personally as a reader. And i think this comes down to the fact that it’s targeted to the lower end of YA. I’m really pleased the book was written as it was, because books are definitely needed for the younger YA audience, but i found the risk to be very low and i just needed something with a little more excitement.
That doesn’t mean that i didn’t enjoy my time reading it. As i said, it’s a lot of fun and i’m sure it’s something that people will devour and love. I’m really pleased i got the chance to read it and i’m excited to see what happens to these characters next, and support Lucy through her author career!
The Little Contemporary Corner 