London Belongs To Us - Sarra Manning

London Belongs To Us – Sarra Manning

London Belongs To Us - Sarra Manning

London Belongs To Us is a madcap all-night rush around London. Sunshine – or Sunny, as she’s known – has a pouffed up Afro and a pretty lush boyfriend. But oh-oh, looks like he’s been up to no good and she wants to sort his story – and herself – out!

Just as her name suggests, Sunny is a wonderfully warm character, as are many of the characters, including the effervescent French Godard boys. The novel, as a whole, is equally warm and dotted with humour throughout. It’s also packed full of quippy, teen dialogue that runs the risk of grating but it’s really oh-so-softly smooth.

Each chapter of the novel is preceded by a quirky checklist or graph – they’re quite fun. And each chapter begins with a few italicised paragraphs giving a bit of background to a specific area of London (so the novel takes you on a bit of a race around lots of its boroughs).  They were quite funny but they didn’t persuade me to love London in quite the way Sunny does (it's a big claim she makes and maybe I wanted her to open her arms a bit wider; I definitely ended up feeling a little bit more like Jean Luc).

London Belongs To Us is a sweet little escapade of a novel with great dialogue, warm romantic fun and a fair bit of super-sass girl power too.

Publication details: Hot Key Books, 2016, London, paperback

This copy: review copy from the publisher

London Belongs To Us has been nominated for the Carnegie Medal 2017