The Wrong Boy

Grace Foster-Bryce is a rich Surrey girl with a privileged existence: huge house with swimming pool, tennis court, pony, staff etc but then her life comes crashing down around her. Her father is in prison for art fraud and with her mother and her younger brother, she reluctantly moves to a run-down house on the wrong side of Notting Hill. There she meets JJ, a poor boy from a nearby, run-down council estate. JJ has exactly the right combination of personal qualities – tough enough to be respected on the estate, but artistic and sensitive too. Just the right kind of boy for a Cosmo/Piccadilly novel; just the kind of boy to fall in love with.

Research into what it is really like to live in London’s inner city estates isn’t perhaps this writer’s strongest point, other than the fact that there are some good but poor people like JJ’s mum who has brought up six kids on her own and can produce sausage and mash for everyone at the drop of a hat. Putting on a school production of Othello to raise money for the local community centre seems to belong to a different kind of book altogether and, like Four Weddings and a Funeral which was set in the same part of London, there seem to be very few black characters in this part of town.

But if you don’t pay too much attention to these issues, and maybe the target readers won’t, then The Wrong Boy is a thoroughly engaging, romantic read. The growing love between Grace and JJ despite their differences is sweetly told and there are some good minor characters too, particularly Grace’s younger brother and her new best friend.