Friday, 19 June 2020

Beauty and the Bin by Joanne O'Connell

Publication for this book has been pushed to early next year.


Parents are humiliating – especially when they're eco-warriors.

Laurie loves her family and she wants to join them in making the world a better place. But right now, she doesn't want to fish food out of bins, she wants to wear a pair of ordinary tights and have the money to order a hot chocolate at the café after school.

When a competition comes to Silverdale High looking for the next generation of entrepreneurs, Laurie finds herself unexpectedly in the spotlight. The homemade beauty remedies and potions that she has been posting online are stealing the show, and the most popular girl in the school wants to team up for the win. It seems like Laurie can achieve normality – and even popularity – at last. But will her eco-warrior family accept that she no longer wants to be part of their close-knit gang, and can she find success and glory without losing sight of her true self?

Joanne O'Connell's Beauty and the Bin is a fresh and funny debut about friends, family, school and being a young eco-warrior.



WOW, Laurie's parents are embarrassing. I know food waste is a huge problem and I agree that something needs to change, but they just decided that dumpster diving was the way to go and completely ignored Laurie any time she tried to talk about how she felt. I realise they were trying to make things better overall, but really. A little give and take, people. But then they did come through at the end.

Charley is confusing as well - for most of the book she seems like a typical Mean Girl, but she comes good at the end, so maybe the whole point is that everyone is both nice and nasty. That would be a lovely message, actually.

I really enjoyed the story as a whole. I loved that even when Laurie was caught up with Charley, she still did her best to help and stay close to her own friends; too often in this kind of story the old friends are dumped as the hero scrambles to keep up with the popular kid. I was really pleased when that didn't happen. I'm looking forward to trying out the recipes in the back, too!

I hope there's more books in this series. There's plenty more topics to tackle, after all.

A really great read, kids are going to love this one.

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