Melly, Fatty and me

by Edyth Bulbring

The second in the Melly series

207 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2011

About the author

Edyth Bulbring is an award-winning author of nine Young Adult novels: The Summer of Toffie and Grummer which was shortlisted for the English Academy's 2010 Percy FitzPatrick prize for Youth Literature (Oxford University Press, February 2008); Cornelia Button and the Globe of Gamagion (Jacana, April 2008); The Club (Jonathan Ball Publishers, September 2008); Pops and The Nearly Dead (Penguin, March 2010); Melly, Mrs Ho and Me (Penguin, September 2010); Melly, Fatty and Me which was awarded the English Academy's 2012 Percy FitzPatrick prize for Youth Literature (Penguin, September 2011); The Mark which was awarded the English Academy's 2016 Percy FitzPatrick Prize for Youth Literature (Tafelberg September 2014) and Snitch which won the 2017 M.E.R Prize for best Afrikaans or English youth novel (Tafelberg, May 2016).

She was born in Boksburg and grew up in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. She worked as a journalist for fifteen years and was the political correspondent at the Sunday Times of South Africa covering the first democratic elections. She likes dogs, trees and junk shops.

Reviews

[shakira ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

painfully terrible

[Kyra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hi!

This is from my blog, www.blogofabookaholic.blogspot.com! So head over to read my other reviews! :)

One Word: WOW! I absolutely loved this book! The cover is really funky and modern and I think it will attract teenagers to picking up this book and reading it, even better, the book itself is BRILLIANT. The instant I read the very first word on the ivory page I was hooked. The author, by writing just a couple of sentences, lets you know that this is going to be a good book, a great book. She draws you in, which I find is very important when reading and writing a book. You could immediately immerse yourself in April-May February's (The main character) world. She is spunky, interesting and smart, three characteristics I LOVE in the main character of a book. I loved how she could be quirky and funny and smart, all at the same time.

The plot was brilliant! It was a constant adventure that kept you guessing and turning the pages. Every time one of the chapters finished, it would leave you on a cliffhanger, URGENTLY needing to read the next chapter.

Another aspect I loved about Melly, Fatty and Me was that it is based in South Africa, which was lovely that I was able to familiarize myself with the book. I also found a few South African words in there and I would just smile when I read them,like; braaing, gemors and boep. They also talked about Pretoria and Johannesburg a place where I have previously lived and some of the places I went to were also mentioned in the book e.g. Gold Reef City! :)

It was just a really lovely, sweet book about a spunky girl, her nose-breathing friend Melly (Melanie), the new bursary kid, Fatty (Ericca Ntona/Eric Catona) and bad boy Sebastian (Bas). You don't often get Young Adult books these days that aren't gory or about werewolves and vampires and this was a really nice change.

If you want to read a book written by a fellow South African, then all South Africans, read this. If you want to read this book and you're overseas, READ this, you can learn a lot about South Africa from it!

I really enjoyed this book and I think you would be quite silly to miss out on such a good read!

[Paige Nick]

It's the second in the series, and a fantastic YA read.