This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
REVIEWED BY KIRA SLAUGHTER
Will you marry me? I think of you, then. I think of you every day. But usually in the quietest part of the morning, or the darkest part of the night. Not when my boyfriend of two years has just proposed. I look up at Richard with his hopeful eyes.
‘Lily?’ he prompts.
It’s been ten years, but it feels like only yesterday that you left. How can I say yes to Richard with all my heart when most of it has always belonged to you? I take a deep breath and will myself to speak…
Ten years ago when Lily was just sixteen, she fell in love with someone she really shouldn’t have fallen in love with. Now, living in Sydney and engaged to another man, she can’t forget the one that got away. Then her past comes back to haunt her, and she has to make a decision that will break her heart- and the heart of at least one of the men who love her.
Three words- Oh My God. I know I always say that I find good books so hard to put down, but what the hell – I’m going to say it again. I could not put this down. Like her previous three books, Paige Toon has created a story that pulled me in and made me feel as if I was there, living the lead character’s life alongside her.
Pictures of Lily is about a sixteen year old girl who is uprooted from her home in the UK to a new life in Australia by her Mum, who is following her heart and going to live with a man she met on the internet. Obviously this doesn’t go down too well with Lily and she arrives in Adelaide immediately hating everything in sight. Her hate soon grows into something verging on love when she finds out the man her Mum has fallen for works at the local conservation park. Lily has always had a soft spot for animals and she immediately falls in love with the place, and eventually gets a summer job there. This is where the story really kicks in!
She meets Ben, who is a keeper at the park and they get on straight away, due to their shared love of animals. From then on Lily develops a crush on Ben, which eventually turns into love. Because the book is written in first person, you immediately feel everything Lily is feeling and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She has such strong feelings for a man she knows she shouldn’t have, and you feel them along with her. This is one of the things I love about Paige Toon’s books; she writes in first person and you immediately become entangled in the lead characters life, her writing is that good.
There is a fabulous twist in the book that throws a spanner in the works for Lily and Ben, and that had me gripped and turning the pages super fast to find out what happens next.
Skip to ten years later and Lily has mapped out a nice life for herself; she’s engaged to Richard, has a job as a receptionist at a publishers and she has a good group of friends. Another brilliant thing about Paige Toon is that she includes characters from her last three books, and in this case Lily’s friends are Nathan and Lucy from Lucy in the Sky!
Then one day she sees Ben at Sydney Zoo where she has taken her stepsisters for the day, and suddenly her life is thrown into chaos.
I won’t go into any more detail as I wouldn’t want to ruin this fab book for you, but all I will say is snap it up as soon as it comes out as its well worth a read. The characters, especially Lily, are brilliantly written, and the chemistry early on in the book between Ben and Lily is so palpable that it literally jumps off the page at you!
I’m giving this a fabulous 10/10!
Purchase this book here!
