London Belongs to Me by Jacquelyn Middleton

I really love a good coming-of-age story and sometimes we all need a little break from all the serious reads. It’s summertime after all.

Here’s more about the book

Meet Alex, a recent college graduate from Tallahassee, Florida in love with London, pop culture, and comic cons. It’s not easy being twenty-one-years-old, and Alex has never been the most popular girl. She’s an outsider, a geeky fangirl … with dreams of becoming a playwright in a city she’s loved from afar, but never visited. Fleeing America after a devastating betrayal, she believes London is where she’ll be understood, where she belongs. But Alex’s past of panic attacks and broken relationships is hard to escape. When her demons team up with a jealous rival determined to destroy her new British life, Alex begins to question everything: her life-long dream, her new friends, and whether London is where she truly belongs.

I know this story will get a lot of flack for being yet another cliched novel about a young woman moving to the big city and everything falling apart for her. But I personally really liked this novel.

I think it’s because Alex is a character I resonate with. I’m also a pretty awkward nerdy fangirl who understood all the Doctor Who references in this book. She’s a little afraid of everything, but so is everyone who just starts off post-graduation.

What really drew me into this book was Olivia. She’s this hoity-toity character that Jacquelyn Middleton did an excellent job with writing.

How do I know this? Well, when I feel the urge to slap a character in the face I kind of take that as my litmus test to a well-written character. You know that if you want to slap a character that they’re a well-written one. Only good writing can incite anger in anyone that reads it (and it was the point).

While the story itself slowly started out, once you get further into it you get to know these characters a bit more. You get annoyed with Alex and you want to slap Olivia. You feel emotions for them and you hope for the best.

But of course, the story gets more and more happy as you go along. There’s love and there’s hope and things start to look up for our tried and true protagonist.

I don’t think there’s much else to describe. I think the only thing I didn’t like about this story was choosing to write Alex in the third person. With all the personality injected throughout the story, you want Alex to be the one telling it, not the third person omniscient. Perhaps Jacquelyn Middleton was worried with it being too strongly personalized?

I think it would have been easy to fall into the whole first person POC and lose the tone of the book entirely. I also think that with a bit of restraint, Alex’s voice will be able to come through without overpowering the way the story is being told. But then again, that’s just me.

Paperback, 394 pages
Kirkwall Books (October 14, 2016)
Rating: 3.5/5
Find London Belongs to Me on Amazon

I received a copy of this book from Kirkwall Books and the author for free in exchange for an honest review. My opinions have not been influenced by the publisher or the author.

Simone and Her Books is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. This in no way affects my opinion of the above book.