Six weeks after a drunken coupling with her boyfriend, Matthias, Imogen discovers that she’s pregnant.
Like every woman who has found herself in that situation, she has a decision to make. And it’s the journey towards that decision that the story is about.
Life isn’t simple and Imogen has more than one person to think about on this journey: Her eight-year-old sister who relies on her to look after her; her boyfriend who sees Imogen as an escape from his abusive father; her drunk of a mother who doesn’t care about herself anymore.
And that’s why this is such a good story.
For a start, it hits you straight in the gut as Immy is told that she is six weeks pregnant and that she only has six weeks to decide what to do before it is illegal to terminate the pregnancy. Her confusion and stress are so real, it draws you in and you forget that you are reading a work of fiction.
Ms Degarmo is an artist and emotions are her paints; I sat there and read the story all the way through, biting my tongue, wanting to step in and slap her mother, to hug Sadie and to give Immy the support she needed. The tears flowed as Immy had to make an incredibly hard decision and that’s the mark of a brilliant writer, the ability to make you feel everything the characters feel, to make you see the characters as real and not just as constructs.
This is one book that every woman will be able to connect with and that every teenage girl should read before they venture out into the wide world of relationships.
This isn’t the first of Jessica’s books that I’ve read and it won’t be the last.
The World of The Teigr Princess 