Full disclosure, I am too old to have read Jacqueline Wilson as a child but she was the author who got both my daughters reading independently and for that I will always love her (and I am familiar with her writing as a result) but I'm reviewing this as a standalone and bringing none of my own nostalgia to the table. It's ok.

I have read and enjoyed many of Jacqueline Wilson's books, regularly using them as book club picks. I was delighted to be chosen by @randomhouse and @penguinrandomhouse for an ARC copy of 'Think Again'.

The novel follows Ellie, Nadine and Magda from the 'Girls' series. The girls are now grown up - the story opens on Ellie's 40th birthday - but at very different points in their lives. Nadine is single and happily playing the field. Magda is in a relationship and a step mum, whilst Ellie is now an art teacher, cartoonist and single mum to Lottie. Lottie is 19 and working at a summer camp.

I enjoyed the story, and the reappearance of some of the other characters from the original series, however for me it didn't quite have the emotional depth of the original series, but I am sure it will be enjoyed by many readers.

Certainly not perfect - but wonderfully nostalgic. I marathon-read the original Quartet before diving into this so can confirm that Jacqueline Wilson has slipped back into the head of Ellie absolutely seamlessly.

I was a little disappointed at times and think things could've been taken further and deeper for a *true* Jacqueline Wilson emotional experience.

But I cannot fault the feeling of staying up past my bedtime to finish a JW book and how sentimental that feels.

Oh how I struggle with this book, I so desperately wanted to give it 6 stars and just love it, but I just didn't quite click as I hoped.

First the positives, JW is a queen, I adored her growing up and the Girls series was just at the right time for me finding my feet as a young teen. I still read her younger fiction as i find her ability to right tough stories with warmth and reality second to none. This book has all of her recognisable comforting and easy to read style, the way she writes is just so easy to absorb. I really loved some of the new characters (Lottie in particular) and some of the little self references just made the child in me grin with joy.

However... I loved Magda and Nadine just as much as Ellie and they are but side notes to Ellie in this book, perhaps this is setting up another series with a book for each but I really felt like they deserved more (and I would absolutely read them to find out more).

I think my biggest issue is I felt like she pulled her punches, something I've never felt her do before. The repercussions and relationships didn't go hard enough for me. I'm used to being challenged and often devastated by a jw book but this was gentler. I wanted the fierceness of the friendships, I wanted the characters and situations to be more, I wanted to sob to be honest.

This isn't to say it isn't good, I actually think people new to JW will really enjoy it. I loved being put back into that world and some of the ideas and story arcs were really interesting but I think maybe I just loved the older books too much and this was too different, I needed to be emotionally devastated and I wasn't.

An adult novel from Jacqueline Wilson? Sign 👏 Me 👏 Up 👏

Think Again revisits Ellie, Magda and Nadine from the Girls series, now that they are aged 40. As someone who loved Jaqueline Wilson growing up, I actually never read the Girls series! This didn’t matter though, and if you’re the same, you may still enjoy this novel.

Ellie’s 40th birthday is approaching and she’s reflecting on life now that her daughter has grown up and gone to university. When an appearance from someone in her past turns her dating life around, Ellie starts to question all aspects of her life and evaluate what she wants from it.

This book brought me right back to my Jaqueline Wilson days. Wilson’s voice is strong as ever in this book, and it has the same compelling qualities that her older books did. One criticism I have for this book however is how stuck in the past the main character is. She’s a 40 year old woman who, at some points, still feels like a 13 year old girl, but at the same time, seems way older than 40?! I do think that it would have been better to introduce more new characters rather than have so many re-appearances of old characters (including multiple teachers from her old school), it just felt a bit too convenient and unrealistic for me.

However, I adored the exploration of sexuality in the book, it wasn’t too much and was just right for this character. I loved the lesbian representation - it was obvious from reading the book that it’s semi-autobiographical for JW.

The dynamics between the characters in this book were so well written and I found the book so easy to read, I will definitely be picking up JW’s next adult novel. ❤️

Massive thanks to @randomhouse @penguinrandomhouse @transworldbooks for sending me an advanced copy via @netgalley. Think Again is out on 12th September.

If you enjoyed Jacqueline Wilson's 'Girls' series as a young adult, you'll probably be interested in this book. Narrator Ellie has grown up alongside us all, and is now forty years old. She is an illustrator, and a single Mum whose daughter has just left for university. She is consequently feeling a bit lonely and starting to feel the need to make changes in her life. A new friend arrives on her birthday, and encourages Ellie to start following her impulses and instincts. A new romance also comes along, in the form of a face from her past.

This book is mostly charming. Ellie is a likeable narrator, and while she still has some of the same insecurities as her teenage self, she is also a self-assured character who knows her own mind. When her love interest starts to metaphorically push her around she notices this behaviour and finds it unattractive, which prevents the book from becoming too uncomfortable.

I would have liked Ellie's childhood friends Magda and Nadine to play more of a role in this book - they are hand-waved aside as being too busy, and only make a handful of appearances. Neither get any real resolution for the difficulties they are facing. This is a shame in a book that is deliberately playing on the nostalgia of former teen readers who cared about their friendships in the 'Girls' books.

Nonetheless it is an enjoyable read that would stand alone for people who have not read the original series.
Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review,

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

First off, this book is 100% for people who read the original Girls series as tweens/teens and are now grown-ups trying to navigate middle age. It's a huge nostalgia-fest, with multiple easter eggs for other famous Jacqueline Wilson books throughout. Ellie's voice feels just the same and also a world away from Girls in Love, with that same self-deprecating attitude and constantly being in her own head about everything, but also dealing with all these adult problems. Friendships, family, romance - Ellie and her best friends Nadine and Magda are still grappling with it all at 40. This was a delight to read, and i do hope we might hear from Ellie again in the future!

It's Ellie's 40th (my how time flies!) and no one is interested. Her daughter, Lottie bails on coming to see her from Uni and she receives a call telling her that her comic strip, "Myrtle Mouse" in The Guardian is being cancelled. So Ellie is freaked that she will "only" have her teacher's salary to live on. Ellie lives in a council tower block and is a single mother. She ruminates on her life, how only her cat loves her and she makes plans to change her life. We also catch up on Ellie's extended family and her "girls" Magda and Nadine. This will be a popular novel as a trip down memory lane and contemporary comparison for many to their own lives. It is a very easy read an I did feel like the tone was just the same as the "Girls" series of novels which I'm not sure works as an update for adults. The pacing was also a bit strange and it just didn't seem authentic and "real" to me.

Wanted to love this because Jacqueline Wilson is an icon but sadly just not for me. I expect others will enjoy it though and it’s a nice concept to return to her earlier characters.

What a great run. Warm, fun and funny and with fabulous characters. I hadn't read the Girls, but enjoyed this immensely and would recommend.

What a delight and a privilege to be back with Ellie! She has such a strong voice that as soon as I started reading I thought 'oh yeah, that's Ellie!' like when you haven't seen a friend for years and you just fall back into your old rhythm. Her world is so warm and immersive that it was really comforting and easy to read from. I loved spending more time with her and her extended family, including of course, Magda and Nadine. I really loved the strong theme of independence and the focus on Ellie's career and her strong passions.

As much as I enjoyed the book, I do have several issues with it. Although I still read YA contemporaries, I don't tend to read this type of adult commercial fiction at all, so the pace felt very slow. Ellie has two central relationships in the book and I think we spend far too much time with one and not enough with the other. It got very frustrating towards the end. I also would've liked to see more positive representations of men. It does go down the 'men are trash' route a bit, which I don't feel is wholly accurate or representative. Of course white cishet men have a lot to answer for, but the 'that's just them being men' take the book comes away with feels a bit off, especially when referring to older Millennial and Gen X men. The lack of support and context Ellie has in navigating her relationships also feels very odd.

Ultimately though, I honestly think Think Again holds genuine significance in 2024. For readers of my generation to have a Jacqueline Wilson novel for adults, written especially for us, centring on a topic that has been at the forefront of so many of our lives in the past few years, feels so important. It's incredible for us to be able to have that.

I'm sure there'll be more mixed opinions on Think Again when it's released, but I'm grateful that it exists and that I've been able to read it. I might've been critical here, but I'm still such a big fan. All hail queen Ellie!

3.75 stars

An amusing and heart-warming 'nostalgia-fest' for Jacqueline Wilson fans but for new readers it could be lacking in depth. Ellie doesn't act like a 40-year-old, it's as if she's never grown up despite having an adult daughter. There are some excellent, funny scenes with Magda and Nadine but not enough to raise the book above a 3-star rating.

I was never a big fan of Jacqueline Wilson’s books as a young reader, but I did love the Girls series when I was a teenager. I read them all multiple times, and wished I could be friends with Ellie, Magda and Nadine. I was quite curious when Think Again was announced, interested to see how these characters would translate to an older audience. Sadly I don’t think it worked, and I didn’t enjoy it half as much as I wanted to.

I actually almost didn’t finish this book, which is very unusual for me, but I pushed through to the end. I’m glad I did, though I won’t be continuing if it becomes a series. The whole time I was reading, I felt like Ellie, Magda and Nadine were still written as teenagers in an adult setting. They cared about the most ridiculous things, and spent way too much time bemoaning their looks, as you’d expect a fourteen-year-old to do. I also thought the writing was too old fashioned, with words and phrases being used that I just can’t see anyone saying at the age of forty in 2024. Maybe this is how Wilson always writes, but I have nothing to compare it to besides the original Girls series that I haven’t read for over two decades.

I also had an issue with one of the major plot points, involving Ellie and a budding romance. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I found it so weird and couldn’t get on board with it at all. I did like Ellie’s relationship with her daughter, Lottie, but not her strange obsessions with aging and, unusually, elephants. At no time in the book did I truly believe I was reading about a forty-year-old woman, and I think that was the major problem for me. I really had to force myself to feel anything for these characters I used to love, which is a shame.

Think Again already has some great reviews and fans out there, and I’m still sad it wasn’t the book for me. I don’t like writing negative reviews of anything I read, but I try to be honest when I haven’t enjoyed a book for whatever reason. I think Jacqueline Wilson just isn’t the writer for me, but I hope many other old fans of Ellie and co. have a more positive reading experience than I did. I’ll stick with my memories of the original series, in all its cringey teenage glory. Maybe some characters are just better left as they were!

Unfortunately I was really disappointed with this. I found it to be quite clichéd and poorly written. I'm not sure it's just that Jacqueline Wilson is no longer for me, although I am the audience this has been written for, but I really did not rate this.

This book was featured in "24 more books we can't wait to read in 2024" on National Book Tokens Discover.

Think Again by Jacqueline Wilson

Whatever happened to Ellie, Magda and Nadine from the 1990s Girls series? They're all grown up now - but if they think life's done surprising them, they'd better think again... Bringing the same warmth and humour to an adult novel as she does to her work for children, Jacqueline Wilson finally answers the questions readers have been asking her for years in this uplifting, life-affirming book about friendship, family and finding fulfilment in unexpected places.

A dream come true for this long-time Jacqueline Wilson fan, now in her thirties… I get to spend time in my Jacqueline Wilson bubble again! Proper immersive reading that these days is rarely experienced. Getting to spend time with Ellie, Magda and Nadine again was perfect. I am in awe of Wilson. The queen of girlhood and now young womanhood fiction that is relatable at the same time as being unique.

As a long-time fan of Jacqueline Wilson, I first read the “girls” series as a teenager myself and it was so lovely to return to their world and see them at this new stage of their life. This is definitely not for children and contains mature themes, but perfect for adults who enjoyed the series as teenagers (I am definitely the target market for this book). As always, Jacqueline Wilson delivers a book that deals with a range of real-life issues in a very relatable way. I would definitely recommend to all grown-up girls who enjoyed the original series.

Ellie Allard from Jacqueline Wilson's GIRLS series was one of the first characters I ever fully saw myself in. So when I saw that Jacqueline Wilson was releasing a sequel to the series - an ADULT sequel nonetheless - I just knew I had to get my hands on it.

Ellie Allard - our protagonist from the girls series - has just turned 40. She has a beautiful daughter, a nice flat that she's put together entirely on her own, a job as an art teacher, a recurring comic strip in the Guardian, and of course, a lovely little cat called Stella. But things aren't quite working out for Ellie the way she imagined it. She still has her friends Nadine and Magda, but they can never quite find the time for each other, her daughter is always away at university, and, just before her 40th birthday gathering, the Guardian cancels her comic strip.

The novel follows Ellie's life as she tries to navigate lots of new life changes - a new romance from a familiar face from her past, a new friend she meets on the morning of her fortieth birthday, a new idea for a graphic novel as she struggles to think of ways to stay relevant artistically, and new life challenges with Nadine and Magda. I loved seeing Ellie work through these new changes and see her development into an even stronger woman who knows her own mind and knows what she wants. I was so rooting for her particularly as she reflects on what it is she wants out of men and relationships.

As well as Ellie's life, it was so lovely to catch glimpses of the lives of some of the other characters from the Girls series. Ellie's family are all here, plus a few other faces from her past, and there are references abound to not only the nostalgia of Ellie's teenage years, but little easter eggs of Wilson's other works - which made me kick my feet like a little kid every time I spotted one! Nostalgia is actually such a fitting word for this book actually, despite its signature darker themes, the book feels nostalgic in all the best ways, a big warm hug of a read. I won't spoil the ending, but omg, the ENDING! I had been rooting for what happened in the ending pretty much from the moment the book started.

Ugh, this book. This BOOK, man. It is every inch the Jacqueline Wilson book - intensely readable and full of joy, so much so, that I read the whole thing in about six hours and stayed up till 2:30 am because I just HAD to finish it.

If I had any criticism at all, it's that the ending felt a bit quick and I would have loved a bit more of a conclusion to some of the plot threads as some of them felt like they finished too quickly and without a full resolution, but I am also deluding myself into thinking that was done on purpose for a possible sequel. But it could also be because I didn't want the story to end and I could happily read another sequel on Ellie (PLEASE) or even a spin off focusing on some of the other characters (PLEASE!)

In conclusion, I had the best time with this book. THANK YOU to NetGalley for the e-ARC and making my absolute day, week, MONTH. I preordered the signed edition so I am so excited to receive that and read it all over again!

Such a delight! For those who loved Jacqueline Wilson, this return to the Girls series in Ellie's voice was so heartwarming and nostalgic. I'd so recommend it to anyone raised by Jacqueline Wilson in the 90s and noughties. I won't say more as I'd rather not ruin it!

Thanks as always to NetGalley and the publisher.