Book Review - Flirty Dancing

Flirty Dancing
Author: Jenny McLachlan
Series: Ladybirds #1
Genres: Contemporary | Childrens, Young Adult
Release Date: 3rd July 2014
Publishers: Bloomsbury
No. Pages: 300
Source: Purchased
Rating: 

Bea Hogg is shy but fiery inside. When national dance competition Starwars comes to her school looking for talent, she wants to sign up. It's just a shame her best friend agreed to enter with school super-cow Pearl Harris. Bea will fight back!

But when school hottie, Ollie Matthews, who also happens to be Pearl’s boyfriend, decides to enter the competition with Bea, she will have more than a fight on her hands..

Flirty Dancing is book that has been on my radar for a while, all thanks to Amanda. She's a big fan of not only this book but he second in The Ladybirds series, Love Bomb. I've had it for a while after getting it for cheap for my kindle and after what seemed like a few weeks of only reading one or two books, having no motivation or desire to start something new and just overall in a big slump, I decided to start this while in bed one night. I only expected to read a few pages before passing out, but instead I found myself still reading an hour later and being half way through, not wanting to go to sleep but knowing that if I didn't I would be grumpy the next day. Well I didn’t get enough sleep as I normally would because I was busy reading and yes I was grumpy the day after but I finished the story in the morning before I had even taken my little girl to school, being grumpy was worth it for such a light hearted book that shook me out of my slump and reminded me why I love reading.

Flirty Dancing isn't exactly the longest book, but despite how short it may be in comparisons to others it still manages to pack a punch with it's characters, back story and swoony moments. Having very similar taste to Amanda, I knew I would like this book, however I never expected to love it and though it had a few little faults it was overall a really easy and quick read. In school there was always that group of people who were on 'top', everyone want to be friends with them or be them, they thought their self better then those around them and would go out of their way to purposely make someone's life hell. Reading this book made me reminisce about my own experiences dealing with girls like Pearl, which made me connect to Bea's character almost instantly.

As I've already mentioned, this book has a great bunch of characters. We have Bea's family who she seems to have a really strong bond with, they are a bit unconventional but brilliant and I just loved her little sister. I know a lot of people's favourite person from her family would be Bea's grandmother and though I can see why, she's funny and always has a smile on her face, if I had to pick it would be Emma. She's only a toddler so of course she's got this innocence about her but she's got such a big personality that shines through when ever she's around, she just always managed to bring a smile to my face. Including Bea, 3 more characters make up The Ladybirds and we aren't short of variety. Firstly we have her best friend Kat who I wasn't very keen on because she changes to the dark side and I don't think she showed Bea much loyalty until the end. Secondly we have Betty who is so comfortable in her own skin and confident that it start to rubs off on Bea as the stories goes on and I was really happy she had her to fall back on. Lastly we have Pearl, Pearl is the popular girl from school, she's the mean girl but she wasn't always like that and though you didn't really get to find out much about why she turned out like that I'm looking forward to the other stories in the series to help me understand.

I know you are probably wondering why I haven't mentioned Ollie the heart throb yet, right?. Well as I've already said, the book isn't that long and I don't really feel like it would be fair to give away what happens between them. However I can tell you that he is a really good character himself, his friendship with Bea was beyond cute and it really helps her to come out of her shell. Dancing seems to come easy to him, well both of them, but whenever she felt like she wasn't good enough or couldn't do the moves he was always there to give her the support she needed. Overall as you can tell I really enjoyed this book, it was just what I needed and I can't wait to read about the rest of the girls as the series goes on.