#BookTwins If You Liked Flora Banks, You Might Like Biddy Weir #AntiBullyingWeek @Lesley_Allen_ ‏

“If you read … you’ll like …”

When you’ve read a book, do you sometimes find yourself thinking “oh, that really reminds me of *insert name of another book*”?

Welcome to a new feature, in which my team and I make reading suggestions based on your favourites, be they classics, or newer best sellers.  Our recommendations consider not just genre, but writing style, plot—and that ‘feel’ you can’t quite put your finger on.

If you liked The One Memory Of Flora Banks by Emily Barr, you might like The Lonely Life If Biddy Weir by Lesley Allen

 

Flora Banks is a YA book by internationally acclaimed author Emily Barr, about a girl with no short-term memory, while Biddy Weir is by the perhaps less well-know Lesley Weir, on the theme of bullying, but my reading mind connected them because Flora Banks and Biddy Weir are both isolated from society due through no fault of their own.

Although Flora has no memory, she one day remembers a single incident and she grasps at this one shred of hope.  Biddy Weir suffers from a seven year bullying campaign which almost destroys her. Circumstances of her upbringing kept the usual teenage opportunities closed to Biddy. She fell through a network of support systems and, sadly, people chose to gloss over her problems rather than offering help.

Biddy’s journey reminded me so much of Flora’s, although one is from rock bottom and despair, the other of hope. I found Biddy’s story heart-wrenching; the level of bullying was shocking. The book is split between Biddy’s teenage life and her still troubled adulthood, which provides plenty of opportunity for the book to appeal to a wide reading audience.

AmazonUk | AmazonUS

What is it about isolated individuals that makes an appealing read?