3.5/5I may not know what a bogan is nor what Killer Pythons look like (gummy worms, maybe?) plus there must have been a dozen or more expressions that flew over my head, but the story in this one is precisely my cup of tea. Meeting Ally Mc Queen was all yeah, yeah, and yeah for me (and I don't mean the bored/ disinterested kind of yeah.) I like a girl who’s not quite sugar and spice and everything nice. She’s picky and moody and all over the place; she says what’s on her head a lot of the time without thinking things through. But, I liked her working through things and with others, to find that place that’s right for her. What I liked more is that it’s done in the midst of everything being unfamiliar: new place, new school, new people. All made even more complicated by a mother not being what she’s used to and a father not quite sure about what to do about it either. Most of them: they’re all just there, except none of it was easy. Then there’s this lovely development in the form of the boy. Sweet, I suppose… them going from teasing (almost in a boy pulls girl’s pony tail way) to getting to know the other more. A bit more refreshing is the fact they feel, mostly sweet and tentative instead of all heat and flash; they act their age, slow to open up, funny about inconsequential things… then suddenly serious. Good match them, him the jokester… her, the girl who has got everything else up in the air.Up in the air? She doesn’t want to be where she is. She finds fault in most everything everyone decides, and nitpicks over her reactions. That she has a name for each reaction she had made her even funnier in my book. I picture her in LAM (Loud-mouth Ally Mode) or in SAM (Smartypants Ally Mode) and I get the sense that this girl lives in her head a lot. In fact there’s one moment when things are falling into place with people in it seeming OK when she goes and tells herself simply to stop thinking that. Why, yes... this is my kind of story.
