All over the country children go to stay with step-parents, stepbrothers and stepsisters at the weekends. It's just like an endless chain. A step-chain. She's No Angel is the third link in this step-chain.
I'm Lissie, and I live with my dad. Usually, I see Mum and her new family every other weekend, but now I've got to stay with them for two weeks because Dad's on holiday. You'd think I'd enjoy spending time with Mum, but it's a nightmare.
My bratty stepsister is setting me up as a monster and Mum just won't listen!
“In the kitchen I found that she’d ripped open the bag of pistachio nuts a bit too forcefully and sent them shooting all over the floor.
‘Oh you do it,’ she said grumpily as she went marching out. I felt a bit like Cinderella all of a sudden.
As I was sweeping them into the dustpan, Mum came in. ‘Oh dear… never mind, Lissie. We’ve got loads of other nuts, don’t worry.’
‘It wasn’t…’
Oh, what was the point! Something told me that the evening wasn’t going to be such a great escape from the little brats, after all.”
Petronella seems to be the brattiest eight-year-old half-sister ever and will stop at nothing to get Lissie into trouble. She pretends that Lissie has been mean to her and her little brother, ripped a dinner guest’s expensive jacket and broken her mother’s best china gravy boat – all within a few hours of her arrival! Thank goodness for Ollie, her stepdad’s son (as featured in the previous book, Girls Mean Trouble); he can see through the fake smiles and put on tears, but will Lissie’s mum ever admit that her youngest daughter is a spoilt brat? It takes something rather serious for them to see the light…
Anne Bryant’s punchy yet sympathetic writing provides an insightful exploration of a thirteen-year-old girl’s varied mixture of thoughts and feelings when faced with having to compete with ‘new’ siblings for parental attention.
