posted on 14 Oct 2018

The Lost Diary of Sami Star by Karen McCombie

Twelve year old Hannah isn’t just finding her relationship with her friends, Robyn and Zadie, increasingly difficult. She is also feeling pretty fed up with her life at home and is starting to wonder why she seems to be increasingly invisible to her family:

"In the last few weeks, it’s like the colour has drained out of our happy home. Life in the house feels black and white – and it feels like there’s a blinding spotlight pointing straight at Vix. No one ever sees me. I’m in the shadows."

 Vix is her older sister who is involved in an on-going battle of wills with their parents about pretty much everything. In the first few pages the author paints a vivid picture of how she plays her music too loudly, creates a mess everywhere and storms about the house slamming doors as she exits the latest argument with her mum and dad who keep insisting that she should go to university when she leaves school:

Everything changes when Hannah secretly rescues an illustrated diary that she and her friends find in the park. Zadie has dumped it (after having a good laugh with Robyn at what they deem to be it’s ‘lame’ content) but Hannah is fascinated by glimpses of the life of a girl called Sami Star written in  attractive swirly handwriting. It records daily what she is wearing and her hairstyle, both of which reveal a very idiosyncratic character, and, there's also a section with the title ‘Best thing about today’.

In the privacy of her own bedroom, Hannah spends some happy hours in the company of the diary and realises that she would love to meet the author, who sounds like really good fun. Luckily, Vix is equally fascinated when she comes across her sister engrossed in reading it and their subsequent shared interest becomes a renewed bond between them. As they pore over the pages together they learn that Sami has been bullied, is very lonely and really loves her dog and her granddad. Hannah decides to try to find Sami so that she can return the diary by putting up posters in the local park but when this proves to be unsuccessful, she needs the help of big sister Vix to search further afield using some clues in the diary.

As is usual with books published by Barrington Stoke that are well designed to be ‘super readable’, the plot unfolds quickly and there is plenty of lively action throughout with good character development along the way.  The great illustrations by Katie Kear add to the depiction of angry Vix and the unkind but glamorous looking Robyn and Zadie. They also show us some of the tantalising content of Sami’s illustrated diary.

I enjoyed this story about friendship, family and the need to be confident in one’s own individual style. I rather like books about children who feel that they don’t fit in with the ‘in crowd’. Perhaps it is because I used to quite often feel bored with friends talking incessantly about boys, fashion and the gossipy, sometimes bitchy tendency that seems to emerge around puberty.

Without giving too much away, Hannah eventually learns that Sami has gone missing from her home and is particularly vulnerable because she has Asperger’s. It seems that she might also benefit from having a new good friend in her life. 

Karen Argent

October 2018