Love Bomb - Jenny McLachlan

Based on its title, cover and blurb, I thought Love Bomb would be a standard ditzy-teen-girl story in the vein of Georgia Nicholson and Electra Brown. However, I was to be surprised. While it contains elements of that particular sub-genre, this novel also has a much deeper, sadder side.

It forms part of Jenny McLachlan’s Ladybirds series, which follows a former gang of four girls who fell out and are drifting back together. Love Bomb follows the quirky, unpredictable member of the group, Betty. She has just turned 15 and wishes her mum, who died when Betty was a toddler, was still around to advise her as she juggles school, music, friends, her own love life and her dad’s. Then she discovers some secret letters her mother wrote her, guiding her from beyond the grave.

Something I greatly admired in this book is Betty’s characterisation. We all know or knew a girl like Betty at school: loud, tactless, often acting without thinking and causing trouble as a result. In real life these people can be annoying, yet Betty is somehow really loveable. I was furious when certain characters treated her badly!

The letters from her mum were even more touching than I had anticipated, and totally free from sensationalism. It would be easy to romanticise her mother’s death from cancer, but the extent of her suffering is made horribly clear. The mum as a character is brilliant and so is Betty’s friend Bill. There’s also a nice vintage element to the story, with characters’ main hobbies including jive dancing, singing soul and strolling around Brighton.

One thing that made me uncomfortable was the consumption of alcohol by the teens at a party. Although Betty briefly considers that her dad wouldn’t approve, she drinks anyway and, while the evening doesn’t end well for her, nothing’s said that suggests it was down to the drinks on top of other factors. I think there’s a perception among teens – there certainly was when I was 15 – that alcopops aren’t “proper” alcohol and drinking them doesn’t have serious consequences when, in fact, it can. I would have liked to have seen the characters be hungover, at least.

I was impressed, however, by the way in which the writer manages a number of different plot lines without the book feeling over-packed. While I think “Love Bomb” is a bit of a cheesy title for such an intelligent book, I like that the word “love” is included as the novel is, at heart, an exploration of many different types of love and how important they are when you are 15 and trying to make sense of the world.

I was actually really sad when this book ended. Although there are the other books in the series in which Betty is a secondary character, I would love to read more stories with her as the protagonist. She is great fun and very sweet and this novel was a wonderful surprise.


*This review was originally written for Cuckoo Review (New Writing North) and is reprinted with permission*