Audio CD Sundae Girl

    When 11-13 year old English girls are not reading Jacqueline Wilson  or Malorie Blackman  or Anne Fine, it appears that she is reading Cathy Cassidy . As a mother of mostly boys, I had never heard of Ms Cassidy until Puffin sent me Sundae Girl as an audio book read by India Fisher.
    My thirteen year old son and I were off to hear an Israeli rock concert featuring the Idan Raichel Project , when I pulled out Sundae Girl and said I had to listen to it on the way to Alexandra Palace. He shrugged and looked out the window. I turned it on and we became instantly entranced in the world of 14 year old Jude, her alcoholic mother and her Elvis impersonating father. We became engrossed in the increasingly alarming plot twists. We found ourselves laughing, loving granddad's Irish accent and Giovanni, mother's boyfriend's, Italian one.
    Neither of us would have picked up this book because my son tends to go in for more male and more sophisticated looking books. I tend to judge children's books by their covers and this one looked light and inappropriate at the same time.
    The other day my son got into the car a minute after to me with a look of betrayal on his face, "You listened ahead without me," he said. "I couldn't help it," I replied, "I wanted to know what was going to happen next."
    We both recommend this audio book, for boys, women, teen age girls and maybe even dads. The families are messy and the issues are for more sophisticated audiences then they tend to recommend. But I think that 13 years old and up would be my recommendation. I suppose mothers of 11 year old girls may differ.