Saturday 11 July 2020

Book Review: Bea's Thanksgiving by A. White

⭐ out of 5

OK, before I even open the book I'm confused about two things - firstly why the editor is credited and secondly why there's such a huuuuge age range... 10-18 years old covers at least two age ranges of book - Middle Grade for the 10-12 year olds and Young Adult for the 13-18 year olds.  I'm also guessing that the book is either written in or set in America as British kids would barely have a clue Thanksgiving even existed, let alone why it is a holiday in America!

In under 10 pages I'm thinking it should be Young Adult because of several word choices that a 10 year old would never understand but the main character seems to be a lot younger than a teen, so maybe that's why the author gave such a huge age range for the target audience?  IMO it should either have easier words and be aimed at the younger end of the target audience or keep the words but significantly mature the main character.

The main character is 8-10 years old, so it's younger even than middle grade 'cos children prefer their characters to be a couple of years older than them, so it should be an early chapter book for 8-10 year olds, maximum... there's no way an 18 year old would read a book with a main character who is a decade *younger* than them!!

The end of page 11 and not a single word of speech so far... a child would definitely have stopped reading the book and closed it up, never to pick it up again by now, so the combination of all these things means the book already loses a star.

Sixteen pages into the book and there have been three thoughts but still no actual speech. It would be so easy to do with a bit of minor editing, but the author obviously decided against it, unfortunately.

A huge knocking off of a star because of the swearing!  Do you really want a 10 year old to ask how you pronounce and what a b***ard (my own stars in place of the full swear word in the book) is?

Finally!  Page 17 and we've finally got a small amount of speech!

Another swear word... f**k this time.  That's another star gone and we're not even through the first chapter yet!  If it was aimed at Young Adults then I would maybe have let them slip through, but there could be 10 year olds reading it and there's no way I would want them reading swearing like that in a book!

F**k has just been repeated in less than a paragraph.  If there's one more swear word then I'm stopping reading the book.

Three times in a paragraph.  That's it, the book is losing the final star and I'm not reading any more... I haven't got a clue how the book was published for such a huge age range and without even lesser swear words used.  The rest of the book may be better, but I'm stopping reading now and giving it a single star because I can't publish a review without a star rating.

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