I completely and utterly adored Annabel’s first novel, My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece; it’s one of the few books that I have re-read as I loved it so much. I was very grateful to receive a sampler of Annabel’s third novel Silence is Goldfish as I’m eagerly awaiting publication day. It’s difficult to review a book after only reading three chapters of it but I can say that I’m definitely intrigued enough to want to buy the book as soon as it’s released, I can’t wait to read the rest of it!

Tess is a 15 year old girl who finds out that her dad is not quite who she thinks he is and this leads to her running away from home for exactly four hours and thirteen minutes. I’m already fascinated to know why a teenage girl would run away for such a short space of time in the middle of the day when no one would even realise she was missing. Yet while she was away she had visions of Missing Persons posters being put up all over the city. I’m also curious why Tess hasn’t asked her mum about what she discovered about her dad.

Tess seems to be a loner; she spends a school disco organising the chocolate for her teacher and then sits outside under a tree by herself until it’s over. She is described as being Pluto, which is the smallest planet, in fact so small not even considered a planet anymore, and this gives a great insight into how people view Tess, and how she feels about herself. We also learn that she is very overweight and conscious of the fact. It seems that Tess has a lot of things to contend with at the same time as she’s trying to find her place in the world. I now very much want to know more about Tess and her life.

All in all this three chapter sampler has left me very keen to read more and I can’t wait for Thursday!

Thanks to Hachette Children’s books on NetGalley for kindly sending me this sampler to review.

Silence is Goldfish is out on Thursday 1st October and is available for pre-order now on Amazon.