Review: You Won’t Believe This: Get swept up in the most stunningly moving and hilarious mystery of the year.

You Won’t Believe This: Get swept up in the most stunningly moving and hilarious mystery of the year. by Adam Baron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cymbeline is having trouble at home and at school, with someone targeting his favourite teacher and his best friend's grandmother not well. Can he help to solve both problems before they run out of time?

This is a great read. I think it's at least the second in a series, but I didn't feel like I was missing anything, there were just a couple of references to things that didn't happen in this story. All the clues come together really satisfyingly, including the ones that didn't seem like clues at the time, and I loved how everything worked out. Apart from that, there's some fabulous history on Boat People weaved carefully in.

I recommend this to everyone.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.



There was music then, and dancing. We watched for a bit and then walked up past the National Gallery, where all the roads were shut. There was an EVEN BIGGER dragon in Leicester Square, after which my mouth literally dropped open. I'd been to the street that is Chinatown itself. But today it ws hung wit red paper lanterns, lots of smaller dragons dancing around beneath them to even more drummers, the sound SO loud as it thudded back off all the buildings. There were men with red-and-gold robes and long fake beards, their hats like snakes. Again I thought about trying to talk to Veronique but she kept pulling me off to see this thing, and that thing, before pointing to the end of the street. Another procession was marching towards us, this one of enormous inflatable pandas which went right over our heads. It was stunning and for a second it felt like I'd been whisked off to China.

But it wsn't just Chinese people. There were white people and black people and Asian people. Outside one shop there were some very British-looking police officers with flags poking out from their uniforms. So we weren't in China; this was my city, where I live. My London. It made me feel bigger, as if there was more to me than I knew about. I looked at Veronique and felt something similar, remembering my thoughts when she'd first told me about Nanai. I'd thought that the Chinese bit of Veronique was, sort of, on the reverse side of her, that it had nothing to do with me. But if this party was here, where I lived, then that part of Veronique was connected to me too. It wasn't a bit of her that was different. Her Chinese bit was mixed in with her British bit. And if this was happening here, where I lived, then I was mixed in with it too.

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