Pictures of Lily

by Paige Toon

[Leah]

When Lily moved to Australia with her mother aged 16, the last thing she expected was to fall in love with someone, but fall in love she does. It doesn’t help, though, that the man she falls in love with not only has a girlfriend in England, but is also twelve years older than her. When he departs for England to join his girlfriend Lily is heartbroken and finds that, even 10 years later, she still can’t forget him. So when her boyfriend of two years, Richard, proposes, she’s quite literally gobsmacked before eventually accepting despite the fact she can’t forget the man who broke her heart a decade ago. So what’s Lily going to do when her past comes back to haunt her and she realises that she will have to break the heart of one of the men who loves her?

If you haven’t read any of my Paige Toon reviews then you won’t know just how much I love her books. Until now; I love Paige Toon’s books. Lucy In The Sky was fantastic, Johnny Be Good was even better and Chasing Daisy was stunning. I’ve read them all multiple times and I still marvel at how well written they are and how much I love them. I also love going back and connecting the dots because all of Paige’s characters re-appear in her later books and it’s so good figuring out who we’ve already met in previous books. I’ve been waiting for a new Paige Toon book since, you know, July last year when I read Chasing Daisy. Even more so when I heard about Pictures of Lily, I loved the sound of it and was so happy to receive a copy earlier this week. And, because I have no self control, I started it almost immediately.

Pictures of Lily is done a bit differently to Paige’s previous three books. There’s the standard prologue, which is set in the present day, in which Lily’s boyfriend Richard proposes and whilst Lily ponders the question, we head back to 10 years ago when Lily first moves to Australia. Then for the next 175 pages we learn about Lily’s life as a 16-year-old. What it was like to move to Australia and be wrenched away from everything she’s ever known just so her mum could be with a man she met on the Internet, how she ends up accompanying her mum’s boyfriend Michael to the animal sanctuary where he works and ends up loving it and then, falling in love with someone, Ben, who is twelve years her senior, has a girlfriend and is moving to England to be with said fiancee. I thought it was a stunning opening to the book. I was immediately sucked into Lily’s 16-year-old self and I was hooked.

We then move back to the present day which follows immediately from the Prologue where Lily is being proposed to by Richard (at a wedding, no less). After reading all about what happened to Lily when she was younger, it was easy to see why she was so hesitant and it was equally as easy to see why she was still hooked on Ben. I worried that maybe I would just see it as a teenage crush and that Lily should have gotten over it years ago but it wasn’t like that at all. Paige writes the first 175 pages so well that it would be far too mean to just brush off Lily’s love for Ben because it just comes across so real and all consuming. I must admit, I did find the present day part of the book a little bit slow. After the fast pace of the first 175 pages, it all seemed to slow down a little. That’s not a criticism at all, though, and I eagerly awaited the arrival of someone from Lily’s past because for me, it couldn’t come soon enough!

Much like Lucy, Meg and Daisy before her, I absolutely loved Lily. I adored her 16-year-old self and could have read an entire book about her at that age. She doesn’t have an easy time of it at 16 and she handled it well. To then still be pining over Ben after a decade made for sad reading. It was clear that he had really helped her when she first moved to Australia despite the fact it all took place in such a short amount of time. Like Lucy, Meg and Daisy, Lily is warm and funny and just as down to Earth as the others. I have to say I liked Ben from the off. He’s a huge part of Lily’s new life in Australia, as I said, everything that takes place within the first period of the book made complete and total sense to me. Surprisingly I liked Richard, Lily’s boyfriend ‘now’. He was nice, and was good to Lily. But obviously, I always preferred Ben. There are other characters who make appearances but no one regular enough to be honest. Although I did like Michael and Josh, Lily’s mums boyfriend (and the reason for their move to Australia) and his son.

Paige Toon is an incredible writer. Her writing flows so easily and is such a pleasure to read. I knew that once I began reading Pictures of Lily I would have to finish it on the same day and I did. I managed to finish it in about 5 hours, it was that readable. As I said, the thing Paige does best is bringing back her characters from her earlier books and they’re all mentioned here; Lily is friends with Lucy and Nathan, she sees Luis on the telly (“snogging his gorgeous girlfriend”) and she had posters on the wall of Fence (the band Johnny Jefferson was part of until he went solo) as a 16-year-old. Even Richard, Lily’s boyfriend, appeared in an earlier book, causing me to speed over to my bookshelf to check I was right (I was!). It always makes me smile when I hear from previous characters and to know their life is going well. Pictures of Lily is definitely another hit from Paige and I wholly recommend it. It’s just as good as her previous three books and having read Pictures of Lily, it means the countdown is on for her sequel to Johnny Be Good which is going to be her next book!