Sunny Side Up

Title: Sunny Side Up

Author: Marion Roberts

Type: Children/Teen Fiction

First Published: January 2008

Suitable For Ages: 8-13

Publisher: Allen & Unwin

*****/5

Sunny Hathaway is a normal, happy 11-year-old living in Melbourne with her Mum on weekdays and her Dad and step-mum on weekends. She's not one of the girly, giggly girls who go gaga over lipstick and Zac Efron. She's just a dog-loving Aussie gal running a pizza-making business with her best friend, Claud. Or she was.

All that ended, or maybe everything started, when Sunny's mum invited her boyfriend Carl and his two kids over to decorate the Christmas tree, Sunny's grandma (who her mum hasn't talked to for years) sending presents and wanting to meet up, Claud falling for Sunny's enemy, Buster, and developing a fake laugh, Carl moving in, not to mention the heat-wave going on. Suddenly Sunny is stuck in a whirl-wind of secrets, lies, growing up, and pizza ingredients. Will life ever go back to being sunny side up?

I loved this book because the author made everything so believable, and it's set in Melbourne which is where I used to live. Sunny is a smart, imaginative list-making character who you'll fall in love with by the end of the book.