Rating: 1 Star Themes: True Crime Thoughts: With such a plain cover I seem to have been tricked into reading an AI book. Davidson has written 523 books according to Goodreads and some have much more obviously AI covers. The format did seem a little repetitive despite being so short (but I’ve seen that in human writers covering crime cases too). It irritated me how often the book mentioned finding the boy's name and giving his name back but it never actually mentioned his name (Cairo Jordan) and even worse when looking into the case facts, it gets the cause of death wrong. The book keeps mentioning asphyxiation but all the news coverage on the case states an electrolyte imbalance being the likely cause of death.
Rating: 4 Stars Themes: Children's Fiction, Alcoholism Thoughts: This is an amazing little book. Alcoholism can be such a difficult illness for even adults to understand so knowing how to explain it to children is especially difficult. This book does an excellent job of explaining in a child friendly and understanding way of both addressing the illness and counteracting children’s tendency to internalise the problems, reinforcing that it isn’t their fault and they don’t have to fix daddy. Favourite Quote: “So you are already doing something to help your dad. You have shown him time after time you love him, even when he is late or doesn't show up. He wants to be a better dad for you two, and that is going to be an enormous help in him getting better.”