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Picture Imperfect

£22.00

Dolphin Westward spent her childhood as the supporting character in the story of her beautiful, wild, volatile mother Marigold. Now thirty-three, she’s painfully aware that not much has changed. She lives in a tiny bedsit, works in a tattoo shop by day and collects her illustrated mum from police stations by night. Dol yearns to climb out of the rut she is stuck in, but has no idea where to begin. Could gardener Lee and his daughter Ava be her chance for a wholesome family life? Or maybe a steamy romance with roguish actor Joel is just what she needs. And what about the offer from her sister Star, now a successful doctor, to move to Scotland and live with her young family? As the choices threaten to overwhelm her, will Dol fall into the role of extra in someone else’s story once again – or find the strength to forge a brand new path of her own?

In stock

Description

Discover the messy and joyful new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Think Again; a nostalgic adult sequel to the beloved classic, The Illustrated Mum!

Dolphin Westward is done putting everyone else first – especially her unpredictable mother, Marigold. But how do you break the habit of a lifetime?

When she meets Lee, the kind single dad next door, she glimpses the wholesome family life she’s always wanted. Then Joel crashes into her world – a rugged, magnetic actor who makes her feel truly seen – and suddenly Dolphin finds herself torn between two very different futures.

It’s not long before everything begins to unravel, and her picture-perfect life feels further away than ever.

Faced with losing it all, can she learn to stop chasing perfection and start being herself?

READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH PICTURE IMPERFECT:

‘Jacqueline Wilson is a national treasure! Picture Imperfect is at once beautiful, sad, and uplifting’ – Alice Winn

‘I devoured this entire book in one sitting . . . it catapulted me out of a reading slump’ ? ? ? ? ?

‘There’s something so comforting about reading a Jacqueline Wilson book . . . You can just sink into it’? ? ? ? ?

Picture Imperfect is everything I didn’t know I needed: tender, messy and deeply relatable’? ? ? ? ?

’10/10 would recommend to anyone who loved Jacqueline Wilson as a child, and to anyone who’s never read her before this is just the perfect novel of ‘adult trying to sort their mess of a life out‘ ? ? ? ? ?

‘A nostalgic hug from the past’? ? ? ? ?

‘It’s real, raw and completely relatable‘ ? ? ? ? ?

‘I obviously hoovered it up. There’s something about the way Jacqueline Wilson writes that gets me racing through every page!‘? ? ? ? ?

‘I absolutely adored diving back into the world of The Illustrated Mum. . . It brought all the nostalgia. I could not put this down‘? ? ? ? ?

Instant Sunday Times bestseller, August 2025

Additional information

Weight 0.558 kg
Dimensions 24.1 × 16.2 × 3.1 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Hardback

Pages

343

Language

English

Edition

Hardback original

Dewey

823.92 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K