Let’s Talk YA #2

Emily from A Short Book Lover and I have created a weekly feature called Let’s Talk YA. – a weekly feature simply to just share and talk about the books you love. So our posts will all be centered around amazing UKYA authors.

So continuing with our feature, this week’s author is Lisa Heathfield and the first book I absolutely loved emotionally was Paper Butterflies.

I picked this book today because I’m currently reading something of the same genre, and it reminded me of when I first really discovered such emotional and harrowing stories. I read this book at the beginning of a reading lesson at work, and I like my students were transfixed by the narrative but also the storyline. I continued reading it at home and students bought the book from the fair which was amazing.

You have two main characters, June and Blister. June is abused by her step-mum and her daughter Megan. As she is over her fathers other family, they don’t care about her, they feed her till she full and fat, they bully her so that Her step-sister and mum and the best people in the world to her father and leaves June out. Blister is the boy, that she meets in the woods, it’s the bond that saves her and realises she has to stand up for herself even if her father cant see.

This book really changed my reading, I very rarely read something so hard, dark and real because then I was under the impression that I read to escape, but after this book, I changed, its about hearing characters stories, it educates you, it makes you realise that this world is far from perfect.

I was lucky enough to meet Lisa at YAShot last year and I went for that very to reason to meet her, I love books and I can’t wait to read her latest book this year, I Am Not a Number.

So let’s talk… Have you read Paper Butterflies or anything by Lisa? What did you think about? Lets shout to the heavens about this book. Use the hashtag #LetsTalkYA – we’ll be shouting on Twitter too.

Thanks for stopping by and please let me know if you like our new feature. Your thoughts and comments would be amazingly appreciated. Don’t forget to head over to Emily’s blog for her suggestion…