Rating: Four out of Five Stars
Such a nice and heartwarming little story.
Lily has a bad stutter, and this story, although only really aimed at a middle-grade audience, does a good job at diving deep into the challenges and problems that children with disabilities like speech impediments, especially stutters, can face. This includes stigma from even their own parents, with Lily's mother getting impatient with Lily's stutter and wanting to hide it from the world by not telling anyone about it, and her dad who also avoids addressing the problem with Lily, only talking about how awful it is behind her back. Fortunately though they both redeem themselves and have an increased understanding by the end of the book, which is good as I hated Lily's mum at first stigmatising Lily's stutter the way she did and getting impatient with her, but she does genuinely redeem herself. To be honest I felt more annoyed at the dad and the way he was portrayed as being a good parent and good guy yet he isn't even there for his daughter, only seeing her during holiday times, living in another country with his new partner and lets his new child with his new partner live with him but not Lily. Honestly as much as I hated Dylan I didn't blame him for being angry at the dad for leaving them and starting his own family in another country, only having time for them at the odd weekend and holiday time. And of course he talks about how bad Lily's stutter is behind her back to his new partner but just ignores it with Lily, making her feel worse when she overhears it. I understand people find new partners when they split up even when they've already had kids from their previous marriage but did he really have to go and live all the way in Scotland with this new partner and start a new family with her?! He said it might just be temporary but even so, when he has a child who is clearly in need with additional needs and is getting bullied both at school and at home, you'd think he would be there for her, but instead he just glosses things over with her while living in another country, even though she is clearly in need of additional support and compassion from a parent, with her single mum who has full custody of her clearly struggling with it and initially not doing a good job with it.
Still I didn't hate him anything like as much as I did Dillon's friend who so cruelly and horribly bullied Lily, first by mocking her stutter in her own home and then sharing a video of her practising her presentation while she was stuttering with everyone and mocking her for it, and refusing to take it down until his mum made him. I honestly felt so angry with this horrible kid the way he bullied Lily so ruthlessly and am annoyed that he was never shown to get comeuppance even though Lily's mum said both him and Dylan would face repercussions. I hated Dillon too who sends the video to his friend all because he presumes that Lily "snitched" on him about having friends round when he was grounded, like he didn't think to confront her first or he couldn't have just done a prank that didn't involve going out his way as much. He was a horrible big brother bully and barely redeems himself, though is still not as bad as his vile, horrible, ruthless friend though who I hated with a passion and needed to see the comeuppance of. I also hated his sister who was in Lily's class and became best friends with her former, so-called friend Mia who also helped him share the video with loads of people and should have been punished as well, so this made me really angry, as to teach lessons and raise awareness about bullying it really should have shown the main bullies comeuppance. I'll admit, a good part of why I feel so angry about this is because it is far too close to home to me, having been relentlessly and ruthlessly bullied in this same kind of way before, having embarrassing videos of me sent around and laughed at, so that just resonated far too much and made me far too angry.
I did really like the message of being brave and friendship, as even though Lily discovered that her so-called best friend Mia wasn't a really true friend after all, and gets bullied by most of her peers, she still finds a true friend in Leanne and Patrick, who seem to be the only ones who show any real kindness to her. I didn't even like the teacher Mr Davies that much either, as while he may be well-intentioned, expressing concern to her mother that Lily isn't participating enough in class, almost like he was blaming it on her made it seem like he just didn't understand and was victim-blaming rather than sympathising. Leanne and Patrick were the only characters I really liked to be honest, along with Lily, being the only ones that were truly kind and loyal to her, and it was beautiful and heartwarming seeing that level of true friendship, understanding and loyalty between kids that young, teaching a valuable lesson about friendship to children.
It was a nice little read, though I just felt too angry with the level of bullying and how the vile bullies weren't shown getting their comeuppance, as Dillon's friend and his sister really needed to get punished big time, the horrible, vile, disgusting bullies!
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