In The Unlikely Event by Judy Blume

Surely everyone has heard of Judy Blume, the kids author who has been around forever (forever, get it?) But who in their adult life has read one of her books? Well quite a few in Cramlington after this month as our book of the month was her (fourth?) venture into the world of adult fiction.

There were quite a few characters in the book and, particularly at the beginning, it jumped around between the many characters quite a bit. A few of the group struggled with this and to be fair I could see why.

I however loved the book, right from the get go. I just really enjoyed it, I liked all the characters and couldn't believe it was based on real life events.

I remember getting really tense when reading about the plane journeys and genuinely didn't know which way it was going to go when Miri got on the plane. Eek!

The end was maybe the weakest part of the book. I thought it simply didn't need to go so far. I also didn't really agree with Rusty and the dentist - it was so out of the blue, and Miri's newspaper article wasn't the controversial piece I thought it was going to be but I loved the description, the small things, the visit to the underwear shop, the food and the clothes.

Quite a few of the group loved Mason's character. I quite liked how there wasn't a big show down/ending for Miri and Mason as children as realistically things aren't always tied off into neat sections. I'm not sure how I felt about the adult meeting, maybe because we had something similar in our last book - One Night in Winter, but it went down well with the group.

We kind of split into two packs, those that loved it and those who couldn't get past the skipping about of all the characters. I was the former and strongly recommend giving adult Judy Blume ago.

Question of the month - favourite children's author? Don't be afraid to add your comments/questions below.

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