Sophie Someone by Hayley Long

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 256

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 3rd of September 2015

'Some stories are hard to tell.

Even to your very best friend.

And some words are hard to get out of your mouth. Because they spell out secrets that are too huge to be spoken out loud.

But if you bottle them up, you might burst.

So here's my story. Told the only way I dare tell it.'

Sophie Nieuwenleven is sort of English and sort of Belgian. Sophie and her family came to live in Belgium when she was only four or five years old, but she's fourteen now and has never been quite sure why they left England in the first place. Then, one day, Sophie makes a startling discovery. Finally Sophie can unlock the mystery of who she really is. This is a story about identity and confusion - and feeling so utterly freaked out that you just can't put it into words. But it's also about hope. And the belief that, somehow, everything will work out OK.

What I Have To Say 

This book didn't work for me. It was a really good story, but the style it was written in put me off. I get what the author was trying to do, but I don't see how replacing certain words makes something easier to tell. If it was just the words that were traumatic for her that were replaced, I think it would have been easier to understand. It's just that I don't see how replacing words like "fingers" and "head" makes it easier to tell a story. 

It was a very interesting book about language and bi-lingual children. It looks a lot at language and how things can be hard to talk about. It goes a lot into identity. When Sophie finds out what her parents have been hiding from her, she loses her entire identity. I liked how the different parts of the story were named to show how Sophie lost and then found her identity.

I did enjoy this story, it really only was the style of writing that put me off. It's a shame because I think without that it could have been a book I really would have loved.