Lia's guide to winning the lottery by Keren David
Frances Lincoln, 2011. ISBN 9781847801913/
(Age: 15+) Recommended.When Lia wins 8 million pounds in the
lottery, life starts to change. She begins to wonder whether the
problems that she has with her mother will go away now that she has
enough money to plan to get her own flat. Raf, the gorgeous boy she
has been eying off for months, seems to be interested, but she is a
bit troubled that it may be her money and not her personality he is
interested in. Her sister suddenly becomes popular and Shazia, her
best friend, has been forbidden by her strict father to have
anything to do with her money.
What makes this book stand out for me is the humour. There are lots
of laughs in this amusing take on a 16 year old winning the lottery.
Humour is not often found in books for girls and this is a smile a
page as well as a serious look at wealth and whether it makes you
happy. I especially liked the little asides about whether Raf, the
dark and brooding boy that Lia contrives to sit next to, could be a
vampire or a fallen angel, as all the young girls at Lia's school
believe. The truth of course is much more painful, as Raf has many
real life problems to brood about.
Lia comes across as a very selfish 16-year-old. She argues endlessly
with her mother and the sibling rivalry she feels towards her sister
Natasha is brought out brilliantly. However, as the impact of her
lottery win starts to kick in, with so called friends taking
advantage of her, and a hate Facebook page being put up Lia has to
work out just what is important in life. It's a coming of age novel,
with Lia learning about wealth, what it could do to help poverty
stricken communities and discovering the commitment she has to make
to get a relationship to work. There are also themes of bullying,
teen drinking and sex and the author manages to point out the perils
of these without being didactic.
I liked the advice about how to handle winning the lottery that Lia
wrote at the beginning of each chapter, even though she often didn't
follow it. The information about lottery winners, chances of winning
and just what money can do is cleverly put together at the end of
the book, giving the reader a chance to think about wealth and the
possibility of getting it. In the UK she writes that there is 1 in
13,983,816 chances of winning a jackpot in a standard lottery.
I certainly will be picking up any more books that Keren David
writes. I loved her humour and the real world that she created for
her characters.
Pat Pledger