The Seriously Epic Holiday of Lottie Brooks

The Seriously Epic Holiday of Lottie Brooks by Katie Kirby (Puffin Books) RRP: $16.99 ISBN 9780241803455

Reviewed by Rebecca Fung

The Seriously Epic Holiday of Lottie Brooks is the ninth book in the Lottie Brooks series, an epistolary series that, in its format and illustration style, looks like Diary of a Wimpy Kid for girls.

If you haven't read previous Lottie stories - and I hadn't - I found Lottie's age a bit difficult to place at first in this story. She's 12-13 years old, and she acts and speaks like a tween. The stick-figure drawings seem to appeal to a younger audience. Yet the story also refers a lot to boyfriends, kissing, wearing heels, bras, and so forth, with such familiarity that Lottie seems much older. She doesn't sound like a child who is only just discovering such areas of her life.

I don't think the content should worry adults, but they might find it a bit too grown-up. While Lottie has not only a boyfriend but also an ex-boyfriend, and her friends seem to have had a dating history, this isn't about explicit details. It's more about some silly fun with girls fighting over the cutest boy.

Lottie has the chance to go on a ski holiday with her friend, Amber. She's never skied before. The holiday is complicated when another family, including a snobby girl and her high-maintenance mother, joins them. Hilarity ensues not only on the ski slopes but with mean girl fights at the chalet and romantic misunderstandings and tussles.

The pretty simple cartoons do a good job of supporting the text and adding a little humour, though they are only basic, attempting to capture the flavour of a child's diary.

I wasn't completely taken by the prose style in which Lottie would "break the fourth wall" and acknowledge that the reader was reading her diary. To me, this felt a little strange, as if she might write her diary differently because it was being read, and one of the wonderful things about a diary is you feel the author is spilling their guts privately.

I suppose this leads to the next point - Lottie's diary is fun and entertaining. The hijinks with her friends read more like a description of a TV show, with slapstick or visual comedy and plenty of misunderstandings, than a diary at times. But I didn't feel like she was spilling herself to me. I felt the story lacked the secrets, emotions, and perspective that make a diary story so special. The intimacy was lacking.

However, I'm sure many readers - especially girls - will find a lot to enjoy in Lottie's adventures. It's very readable. Family, friends and enemies, competitiveness, fitting in, trying to keep up your image and are very relatable tween (and human) issues.