Review: Ruby Tuesday

Ruby Matthews is seventeen. She’s in the middle of a yearlong feud with her best friend Alex. She wants Joey Milano to talk to her, notice her, like her. She has lots of family responsibilities and her beloved grandmother just passed away.

This is Ruby’s story. This is her life. But after the night of a party gone wrong, Ruby’s life goes from challenging to unbearable. 

How can she ever trust anyone again? How can she face her class? How can life ever be the same?

As she struggles to deal with what happened at the party, Ruby’s world starts to expand as old friends and family she didn’t know existed come back into her life. 

She wants nothing more than to hide from the world after what happened, but she must find the strength to figure out who she is and who she wants to be in the future.

Ruby Tuesday is a coming of age story that sucks you into Ruby’s world from chapter one. It’s raw and emotional, exploring real life issues. It’s relatable and addictive.

Ruby is a brilliant character, filled with that contradictory mix of doubt and bravery so many of us have. She thinks she’s weak, but her actions say otherwise. It just takes her a while to realise just how much courage she has.

Sex, boys, best friend dramas, school gossip, sexism, family and identity are all here in this compelling read. It’s like stepping inside someone’s diary — someone else’s world — and walking in their shoes. 

Ruby becomes a real person on the page thanks to Lawrence’s immersive writing. She delivers an authentic teen voice and a narrative that brings to the surface all the things we think but never say and all the things we do but don’t want to admit to.

If you like thought-provoking contemporary YA, Ruby Tuesday is for you. 

Title: Ruby Tuesday
Author: Hayley Lawrence 
Publisher: Penguin, $19.99  
Publication Date: 1 September 2020
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781760894894
For ages: 13+
Type: Young Adult Fiction

from Kids' Book Review https://ift.tt/3pLwYEY