What's New Harper Drew? Review

Welcome to the hilarious WORLD of Harper Drew... there's a whole lot of DRAMA, but luckily she has tried and tested methods to deal with it! Perfect for fans of Dork Diaries.

My name is Harper Drew. I'm using my new journal to take note of all the totally ridiculous things that seem to go on around me with my family and friends. I seem to be the ONLY ONE who sees this all of this stuff for what it is. Completely BEYOND normal.

Recently I've been logging Drew Dial Ratings for all the mayhem. On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is someone to SAY or DO something that would be less sensible than (for example) ... a demented camel?

First up is the annual Drew trip to France... and while there might not be camels, there are BATS and Llamas - and my brother Troy who is so obsessed with his hairstyle, he won't even go swimming... that's a whole lot of ratings. I'm just hoping I land an invite to Maisie Felix's party when I'm back to distract me from the Drews... for one whole evening!

The start of a relatable new illustrated series, all about embracing your family, and finding unique ways to deal with life's dramas.

General Impressions

"What's New Harper Drew" was kindly sent to me by Hodder and Stoughton and I picked it up immediately because I needed something light and I caught myself laughing and thinking of how much it reminded me of reading and loving "Diaries of a Wimpy Kid" as a young reader.

Although Harper ends up being caught up in the same kinds of hare-brained situations as Greg, she is mostly a sensible normal kid, consumed by middle school drama and trying to impress popular kids but also very observant and empathetic to the world around her. In fact, my favourite part and what I saw as the heart of this story was her awesome two best friends and how these three teens brought forward the best in each other. I also noticed that while Harper herself comes from a very white, middle class, British family, this is a book that features characters from diverse backgrounds, classes and abilities and how the author was able to show them in a non-tokenized way - with every character having quirks and arcs of their own, even if they showed up only for a couple of pages.

My biggest problem with this book was Harper's parents. I started this book laughing out loud at their scatterbrainedness because they had nice qualities and weren't abusive but after a while, all the gags that were supposed to make the reader laugh only made me cringe. All I could think was these are exactly the kind of parents, people write Reddit AITA posts about thinking it's a funny situation and get the kind of answers that tell them to go to therapy and surround themselves with better people. I mean, I understand Harper is a middle child just entering her teen years so of course she feels invisible and misunderstood but some of the situations that these parents put their kids in reeks of neglect.

The father although loving is an overgrown child who never stands up to his wife, the mother has some kind of OCD/shopping addiction for sure because no matter what might be happening in their lives, she needs to burn a couple of hours every day in every kind of supermarket she comes across no matter what kind of state of exhaustion her children are (forcing five people to stay closed inside a car for hours so she can go shopping and going on holiday with nothing but bleach and canned food being two of the examples) - if this wasn't a middle-class white family, they would have child services called on them. I sincerely hope that this story is further edited because these parents are something but it certainly isn't a comedy act.

Conclusions

I finished this book wishing that it had been more focused on Harper's relationship with her friends and her younger brother Prune (who at the young age of six years old was the only one that seemed to know how to navigate his family without being taken advantage of so here's to you kid!). I reached the end of the book without seeing her parents go through any growth so I decided to write them off but thankfully the same could not be said for Harper who reached the end of the book with a new look at what was really important in her life.

This book also succeeds in portraying people going through difficult patches and being helped and supported by their loved ones and community without making the story too heavy, which I particularly liked to see represented in a story aimed at younger readers.

Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton for this proof.

Rating: 3/5