
French for Kissing
By Sophie Parkin
‘I am living in a perfectly nice, baby-blue painted, two-storey house with purple passion flowers growing outside, and we’ve even got a beautiful palm tree in the garden. Which just proves how deceptive appearances are because I am actually living in a madhouse, with a nutter mother, a screaming Bay – and Poppy, another nightmare altogether.’
Lily lives in Battersea, with her mum, sister Poppy and little brother Bay. Dad has moved in with Suzi – who Lily should hate but actually doesn’t – and her mum is seeing the boy from the café down the road. It’s all a bit chaotic and her parents, in their wisdom, decide that the solution is to pack Lily off for the holidays to summer camp in the Lake District, rather than to her grandmother’s in the south of France. “Quelle horreur!” Lily drops into French whenever she can, and when she grows up is going to be a painter, live in Paris and wear a beret.
But when she gets to camp things look up. She makes friends with Maya from Chelsea – and with Blake and the silent but gorgeous Will. Lily had thought that neighbour Billy was the most desirable boy in the world but when she meets Will that changes…..although is Blake actually more fun?
This is the first in Sophie Parkin’s series The Life and Loves of Lily and is a delightful, charming read for teenagers and adults alike.