Ellie Pillai is Brown

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I loved Ellie's family, including her matriarchal grandma who was so much like mine, and seeing Sri Lankan Christian rep was wonderful. This is the kind of story that highlights the best of humanity, friendship, and what it really means to find your voice and confidence within. Ross Welford introduces Time Travelling with a Tortoise, the sequel to Time Travelling with a Hamster, and a whole new time travel adventure!

An sich ist die Message ja ganz süß, dennoch wurde ähnliches eben schon in hundert anderen Coming of Age-Stories durchgekaut und das etwas besser, denn hier fehlt teilweise der rote Faden und ein ausdrucksstarkes Fazit. It also confronts what it’s like for girls of colour living in pro dominantly white area particularly in terms of self acceptance and romance, which I found again very relatable. I found the whole idea of using QR codes throughout the book to connect to Ellie's playlist absolutely genius!It follows a Sri Lankan-English girl named Ellie Pillai, who is navigating the stresses of school and shifting friendship dynamics, which become even more complex when a new boy starts at school and she falls for him despite him being with her best friend. The music references totally did it for me and my music geek heart, and the main romance lowkey gave me butterflies because it was adorable and built on connecting through songs and it just made me happy. I know it’s a YA book but I feel like some of the slang used was a bit unrealistic and a bit of a stretch. She’s pretty much the only brown girl in her school and she’s hiding a big secret from her first generation immigrant parents (they think she took computer science GCSE when really she’s doing drama, a subject she’s actually not doing even doing well in).

I never considered DNFing though, and I'm really looking forward to the sequel that's released next month! I have even talked the head into a little revamp of the library so that we can display them properly!I think my favourite thing about this was that it very much has the coming of age, British John Hughes-style vibe I was expecting, but kind of turns some the typical beats of that story around and subverts expectations, to the point I actually wasn’t sure who would end up with who because there were so many plausible possibilities for how things could turn out. I don't think I read much of fiction with POC character so was quite delighted to receive this new debut with such main character. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.