I REALLY enjoyed this. I found it to be such an interesting read and I was really rooting for Amelia. I found that her story transported me back to secondary school but was such a story of triumph which I really enjoyed. Her speech at the end reminded me a lot of 'Wonder.' Definitely a feel good story which will be loved and appreciated by many young teens. This is a book I really wish I'd had at 13!

Amelia is a talented cello player, excels at debate club and always does well in school. She is not a natural at baseball but is forced to practice every week by her American Dad who constantly lectures Amelia that only winning is any good. Amelia also has distinctive red hair and with it the pale skin which blisters so easily in the sun.
Despite everything going for her she is picked on at school and given the nickname Maggot because of her pallor and feels the shame of seemingly being hated among her year apart from her one best friend.
When a new boy joins the basketball team and starts to pay Amelia attention this is a new feeling for her, and discovering Evan also attends her school in the year above her she hopes it is an opportunity to gain some respect from her bullies.
But Evan too wants to fit in and quickly works out that admitting to friendship with Amelia is not the way to do it. He makes mistakes but Amelia makes the biggest error by trusting Evan and finds she is punished by social media and playground taunts.
Social media plays a huge role in young people’s lives and so many are unaware of the serious effects sharing photographs have on the victim and those sharing are implicated sometimes criminally. Much more education needs to be done in this area and a novel can go a long way to achieve this.
This book clearly shows the effects of bullying and the reasons teens take the actions they do. It also demonstrates the consequences of stupid decisions which need to be owned rather than allowed to submerge you and take you under.

Being a teenager is hard – I certainly remember and still bear the emotional scars. However, today’s young children now have to contend with social media and the mental impact and pressures it puts on them so that’s what makes Bad Influence such a powerful, empowering story. You hear about sexting and the horrors of people’s private photos being released online and often, people form an opinion about a person from hearing that – Bad Influence really puts it into context and shows how anybody can make this mistake, even a sensible, talented young lady like Amelia. It’s crucial that online safety is tackled by schools and at home to realise not only the ramifications for the person sending a photo but also the criminal implications too.

I really liked how Bad Influence started with the fallout to the photo becoming common knowledge before rewinding 6 months to see how this happened to Amelia. Having her narration shows the reader her honesty and fears but we also can spot how she is being manipulated by Evan and how he treats her around his friends. I found Bad Influence such an interesting read and think that transition to secondary school age is perfect for this book as it is honest but sensitive about such an important topic for young people. It exposes sexism, shows what true friendship looks like and I thoroughly recommend it.

The lives that children and young people lead today are, in some respects, vastly different to the ones that my peers and myself experienced growing up all those years ago. One thing that remains constant, however, is that certain knowledge that adults – on the whole – were never children themselves and just don’t understand what it is to transition from child to grown up with all the complicated baggage that accompanies that journey. In all fairness to our youth, the pressures of social media were not ones that we experienced but there must be few teachers who cannot tell tales of mistakes that their students have made as a result of ignoring what they have been taught in school with regards to online safety.

With many guardians not confident in knowing what their offspring are up to online, children and teenagers unsurprisingly tend to follow the herd, leading them to make all kinds of errors, most of which probably either go unnoticed or lead to a brief period of teasing but, sadly, for a few the repercussions of their actions are far more serious as illustrated brilliantly in this new title from Tamsin Winter – a voice that young people are far more likely to listen to than those of their adults – which acts as a stark warning of the dangers of breaking the rules.

Mondays are orchestra days for Year 9 pupil Amelia but what would usually be a very ordinary walk with her cello and her sister is turned into the walk from hell as she is subjected to shouted abuse and a barrage of equally unpleasant notifications on her phone. Asked by her older sister Hannah what is going on, a tearful Amelia tries to shrug everything off – knowing that this unwelcome attention is the result of The Photo – and heads to class.

Three days later, she finds herself sitting outside the Head’s office waiting to be summoned to the meeting being held with her parents to discuss what has happened and what is to be done. When she is finally called in to give her version of events, she does not know where to start but thinks back to six months ago when she first became aware of The List.

What the boys in her year consider banter is a rancid ranking of the girls, with high-achiever Amelia placed very firmly at the bottom. Together with her undeserved nickname of Maggot, and inability to fit in with the popular crowd, the impact on Amelia’s self-esteem is crushing so when she meets attractive new boy Evan outside school and he start to pay her attention, she is immediately flattered. As she puts into play a scheme to change people’s opinions of her and falls for Evan, she gambles on doing something to prove her worth – a gamble that she loses spectacularly. Now that her best friend’s parents see her as a bad influence, can she overcome her mistake and get her life back on track?

There have always been the popular kids and those, like my daughter and me, who are left on the periphery without understanding why. For Amelia, who is bright, hard-working and a high-achiever, her failure to be accepted more readily for who she is is one that she cannot fathom. Picked on mercilessly for her intelligence, work ethic, pale complexion, freckles and beautiful red hair, she does what so many bullied children do and tolerates what she knows is unacceptable in the hopes that by doing so it won’t get worse. When she meets Evan outside school and he shows a possible romantic interest in her, she is thrilled and soon becomes infatuated with him, placing all of her fragile hopes in his seeing her as someone other than a maggot rubbing off on their peers when he starts at her school.

When she allows herself to be pushed into doing something that in her heart she knows is wrong, she soon learns the hard way that a momentary lapse of judgement can have lasting implications. This sends a very powerful message to young readers, whose lives are increasingly played out to a vast extent through social media, that what is private only stays private until you share and that once you press send you are entirely reliant on trust – trust that is sometimes misplaced.

Aimed at 11+ readers, this is a title I adored – one that is essential reading for those at high school, where children – and in particular girls like Amelia – find themselves under relentless pressure to gain followers and likes on social media and who are far more likely to take in the vital message presented here than they are from teachers or other key adults who are seen as out of touch with what it is to be young.

As always, my enormous thanks go to publisher Usborne and to Net Galley for my virtual advance read. Bad Influence publishes 8th June and is definitely one to pre-order.

So excited to acquire this book for our teen section! I will make sure to share my thoughts on this novel, but it’s so empowering to see a young girl rise from the ashes and I feel many young women will relate to this book & I hope it will inspire them