My especially weird week with Tess

Anna Woltz is a best-selling novelist in her native Netherlands and has won awards, so it’s good to have this book translated into English (and 12 other languages) – it’s a great story!

Sam is on holiday with his family on the island of Texel, when his brother Jasper has a minor accident and is laid up with a broken ankle, so, with Mum incapacitated by migraine, and Dad preoccupied, Sam is more free than he had expected to be. When he meets the Doctor’s receptionist’s daughter, Tess, who is a little older than him, she demands that he tries ballroom dancing with her, which very much surprises his Dad when he comes to fetch him, but Tess persuades Dad that she will show Sam the island and keep him safe. He is soon totally swept into her world, and involved in the trap she lays for the man she knows to be the father that her Mum wouldn’t tell her about, and who doesn’t know she exists. This man arrives on the island, and Tess manages to spend some time with him and hopes to be able to decide whether she wants him to know she’s his daughter. Tess is a force of nature, and Sam is soon on her wavelength: they kindly plan a lovely funeral for a dead bird when his elderly owner couldn’t find anyone to give it the respect he feels it should have – that’s a nice part of the story that shows Tess to be a sensitive girl and not always spiky and demanding. Sam is a bright lad, and he often wonders about all sorts of odd questions like ‘Did the last dinosaur know it was the last?’ and his brother Jasper, still smarting at his failure to pass the high school admission test, mockingly calls him Professor. His inventive brain is needed several times as he tries to help Tess, and things get complicated, but all is well by the end, and the whole adventure is tremendously entertaining. Anna Woltz seems to be able to get into the heads of a bright boy and an intelligent but insecure girl, and there is a lot of humour and fun in this book – it’s very enjoyable, and highly recommended.