Blog Tour | Grow Up, Tahlia Wilkins! by Karina Evans | Review + Favourite Quotes

GROW UP, TAHLIA WILKINS!

Pages: 304

Genre: Middle Grade Contemporary

Publishing Date: April 19th, 2022

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 stars

Synopsis:

Debut author Karina Evans gives modern-day readers their own version of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret with a fun romp about friendship, puberty, and growing up.

Twelve-year-old Tahlia Wilkins is ready to kick off the perfect summer at the popular kid’s pool party. But when the Red Goddess of Panties, aka her first period, arrives 24 hours before the pool party, it messes up all her plans. To make matters worse, her mom is out of town, and there’s no way she’s going to ask her dad for help! Tahlia always feared that growing up would be tough, but this is just not fair.

In order to save herself from total embarrassment, it will take all of Tahlia and her best friend Lily’s scheming to keep her reputation—and her favorite jeans—from being ruined. Sneak off to the grocery store only to have the clerk price check your “goods” over the loudspeaker? Check. Trick your mature teenage neighbor into letting you use her bathroom to ‘rehome’ some tampons? Check. Take a dip into a fountain to ‘borrow’ some quarters for a bathroom period product dispenser? Check, check, check!

With the hilarious and heartwarming tone of Dork Diaries and the critically-acclaimed movie Eighth Grade, Grow Up, Tahlia Wilkins! is a coming-of-age middle-grade novel about growing up, in all of its awkward glory.

Author Info:

Karina Evans is a children’s author from Santa Barbara, California. She is represented by Jessica Mileo at InkWell Management.

Karina studied English at the University of Delaware before starting a career in the entertainment industry. She works in marketing for Sony Pictures and has previously worked for Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures.

Some of Karina’s favorite things are: See’s Candies, The Amazing Race, singing show tunes in the car, and volleyball. She currently lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two mischievous cats, Sir Pounce and Taika.

Author Links: Website | Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads

Thank you to TBR and Beyond Tours, Netgalley and the author for providing me with a free digital copy to review. This in no way, has influenced my thoughts on the book. You can check out the other posts on the tour here.

Review:

This was such a cute, funny read, I loved it! I literally read it in like 24 hours!

I feel like this is the perfect, must-read read for any middle school girl, because it has that entire growing-up aspect. The first quarter of the book is very first period focussed, but the rest of the book does explore sibling relationships, boy-girl parties and friendships.

Let’s get into an in-depth review!

Plot:
The plot had me intrigued from the start. I love me an occasional middle-grade read, and this was perfect! This had me reminiscing to when I got my first period, and the struggles of Tahlia, were very real, and nice to read about!
I loved the plot development as well, it really takes a great arc over the book.

Characters:
I loved the characters! Like all of them were unique and relatable in their own way, and I loved reading them.
My only problem was that except Noah, I couldn’t really picture any of the characters in my head, but I did love reading them!

Writing style:
This was actually refreshing since a lot of authors fail to write in the voice of the age group they’re writing, but Karina Evans didn’t! The character portrayal was just a little lacking, but overall I loved it!

Do I recommend it to all ages, even though it’s a middle grade? HELL YES. I wanted more- the 300 pages felt less😭😭

Favourite Quotes: