The leap couldn’t be bigger. From the two Aspie books straight to a girls’ book which is anything but. Jo Cotterill’s Strictly Friends is purely for the Neurotypicals of this world, but very nicely so. I have to admit it took me a while to work out the title. It’s a book about dancing. Duh.
14-year-old Megan moves from Yorkshire to ‘the south’, and she does so extremely unwillingly. She didn’t want to move. Her parents did. But here she is, in a new town where she knows no one, and where it seems she can’t even continue her ballroom dancing. Bad enough that her partner Jake has been left behind, and now she has to find something else to do.
There is the gorgeous Danny in the park, who lives for danger. He skates and he is into bikes and go-karting. Megan falls for Danny and she starts to enjoy what he does. She also goes to salsa classes – for beginners! But at least she meets the local girls and makes new friends.
Great book about how hard it is to move house, and about how important real friends are. The dancing makes it quite irresistible. What’s not to like about silver shoes and glittery swirly skirts?
The excerpt from book two looks pretty tempting as well. I can tell that Jo must have danced and skated her way through lots of activities for this series. And she probably went to the Cathy Cassidy Factory For Really Wonderful Boys. Wish I knew where it is.
I got it wrong, of course. This was book two, so I’m talking about book three. I’m hopeless.