Good Auntie: Bindi Babes

Nobody needs to feel sorry for Geena, Amber, and Jazz in Narinder Dhami's Bindi Babes; they have the best stuff, their teachers love them, and they pretty much get to set their own schedule.  OK, their mom died last year, but they don't think or talk about that.  Everything is going just fine, until their Auntie arrives from India and forces them to go to sleep on time, eat home cooked dinners, and maybe even talk to their dad on occasion.

This was a fun book that was more transparent to me as an adult than I would have noticed as a kid.  It was immediately obvious that the girls' father had retreated in his grief and that the three of them had bonded together in their dedication to looking good because they couldn't bear to admit how awful their mother's death made them feel.  It was an untouchable wound.  Likewise, their ingenuous plots to get rid of their Auntie were as obvious to me as to her, but not in a condescending or mean way.  The last chapter paid off particularly well, as several of the chance encounters that showed Auntie was more than she seemed came together in the high-stakes chase scene that had the girls racing down her well-marked path to keep her from flying away.

The shoes on the cover led me to pick this book from the shelf as part of my Reading My Library quest, and I hope they entice my niece as well; I'll offer this book to see how she likes it.