Review of Love Bomb by Jenny McLachlan

Title/Author: Love Bomb (The Ladybirds #2) by Jenny McLachlan
Publisher/Date published: Bloomsbury Children's, March 12th 2015
How I got this book: received it from the publisher through NetGalley
Buy this book at: The Book Depository

I'd never read anything by Jenny McLachlan before, but this sounded cute and quirky, so I was good to go.

And I did enjoy reading Love Bomb, though it took me a while to get used to Betty's voice. She's 15, but it's a pretty young 15 in my opinion. Also, she's a bit odd, which is not a problem, but I could not immediately groove with her particular kind of oddness, so we had to get to know each other for a bit before I could go with the flow of the story. I think that Betty is one of those people that I can envy, who can embrace being weird around other people and make it charming. Also, she has awesome friends.

I mean, seriously, let's hear it for her friends, who totally have her back and really KNOW her. They call her out on it when she's being selfish and support her in everything else. This is what friendship should be in my opinion, especially with the honesty when she's doing something that hurts one of her friends.
I also really liked the letters from Betty's mom with her advice on love, first kisses and heartbreak. They were straight from the heart and I was wishing for Betty that she could haave known this woman, who sounded amazing.

Aside from the romance department, Betty also struggles with her dad having a girlfriend, who she very maturely nicknames Poo. I was actually a bit annoyed at Betty for how she handled this at first. I mean, I can understand that you don't like having to share one of your parents after it being just the two of them for years, but she was REALLY rude and that was just not ok. It's mostly due to the girlfriend's efforts that this changes, rather than Betty growing as a person, so I felt this was resolved maybe a bit too easily.

The boy Betty crushes on, Toby, is a bit of a weird, douchy guy and I wasn't really into him, but the other romance that slowly develops over the course of this novel and that I could gleefully see coming from miles away, was pretty cute.

In the end, I did like Love Bomb, but Betty was a bit too juvenile for me to fully get swept up into the swoony part, but it was a cute, quick read.

My rating: 3 stars