Say What You Think

LoveReading4Kids Says

“This is the year I’m going to turn eighteen. This is the year I apply to university. This is the year I try to work out what’s coming next”. This is how seventeen-year-old Serena sets out her stall in Say What You Think, a relatable, uplifting, Croydon-set novel that sees Rachael Fernandes explore an array of pertinent YA themes with a tenderly deft touch.

Serena and her friends (“an ethnically diverse British collection: myself, Indian; Faye, Irish; and Kira, Ghanaian”) are mad about Rose Conrad, a musician who “always releases an album at the moment something new is happening. And we’re going into upper sixth this year.

It is a big year”. But while Kira has ambitions to be Prime Minister, and Faye knows she wants a career in fashion, Serena has no idea what she wants to do. Also worried about going to uni and leaving her arthritic mother alone, Serena struggles with feeling self-conscious and knowing who she is: “I don’t always feel connected to being Indian, because we don’t speak another language at home or practice any religious or cultural events, but that’s still what everyone sees when they look at me”.

Into this, when another of Serena’s best friends (and long-time crush) moves to Manchester, she can’t quite pluck up the courage to tell him how she really feels, with more complications arising when she starts writing an anonymous, outspoken “Secret Sender” column for the school newspaper. While this helps Serena realise she wants to become a writer, it winds up getting her into hot water, while she starts getting the hots for her new neighbour.

Teeming with will-they-won’t-they tension, and coming-of-age concerns around having to make huge life choices, in Say What You Think Rachael Fernandes has crafted a richly relatable contemporary novel that’s ideal for teenagers and young adults who are themselves on the cusp of making big decisions, and for fans of Ellie Pillai Is Brown and Not Here To Be Liked.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
More reviews by Joanne Owen

About Say What You Think

Every time Selena's favourite pop star drops an album, momentous shifts happen in her life. And with new record 'In Between' it's no different.

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