Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy

Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy
Buy Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Confident Readers
Reviewer: Sue Magee
Summary: The first in a series of five books will delight fans of Cathy Cassidy and win her a lot more admirers. It's the ideal book for the pre-teen and early teen girl and looks at fitting in, step-families and being attracted to the wrong boy. Highly recommended.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 304	Date: September 2010
Publisher: Puffin
ISBN: 978-0141384795
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When Cherry Costello told her teachers that she was leaving Glasgow and moving to live in a cliff-top house in Somerset where her father would make organic chocolates everyone thought that it was just another of her tall tales. But this one was true. Not only was Cherry moving to Somerset the Costellos, father and daughter, were going to live with his girlfriend and her four daughters. From it just being the two of them there would be seven altogether. How will Cherry cope? And how will the Tanberry family cope with two new members?

A step-family is never easy. Cherry has always felt different with her straight dark hair and skin the colour of milky chocolate. Not having a mother around didn't help either, particularly when the girls at school realised that the tales she told about what her mother was doing were, well, lies. The stories were to help her fit in, but they had the opposite effect. Would moving to Somerset change all that?

The Tanberry family were quite a close-knit unit, with fourteen year old Honey, Skye and Summer the twelve year old twins and eleven year old Coco. As Cherry was thirteen it was hoped that she could share a room with Honey, but Honey makes it quite clear that she has no intention of doing that – and she's equally firm that Cherry's father isn't wanted in the house either. It's three years since her parents split up, but Honey in convinced that her father will be coming back home sometime soon - despite every indication that he's no intention of doing that.

You know exactly what you're getting with Cathy Cassidy. You get a really good story that rings absolutely true. You get girls you feel you'd know if you met them in the street and you get situations that children of today are encountering on a regular basis. Every story is beautifully written and you know that it's going to be OK to hand the book to your daughter without reading it first to make certain that it's appropriate. Cathy Cassidy is safe but not the least bit unexciting.

Cherry Crush is the first in a series of five books featuring the Chocolate Box girls. It's a wonderful story about being different, about truth and about families. It's also about the problems that can arise when you're attracted to the wrong boy – and it is wrong when he's your step-sister's boyfriend. Not everything works out perfectly – but then life isn't like that and I can promise you that when you get to the end your first question will be to ask when the next book will be published. Highly recommended.

I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.

For more on the difficulties of step-families coming together we can commend Half a Sister by Kelly McKain.

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You can read more book reviews or buy Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy Cherry Crush: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy at Amazon.com.

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