Really, really liked it! A great story and a great writing style. Definitely gonna recommend this.

Let me tell you about my love for this book. Deep, honking laughter, heart eyed love.

Annie is a sassy, independent young woman with cerebral palsy. Fab is a giant Polish immigrant boy who loves life. They bond over Wuthering Heights. Fab wants Annie to be his girl and sweet, independent Annie is not having a bar of it even though the canteen lady is shipping fannie. Throw in a group of weird and endearing friends and a mum that flips you off, and you've got simply the most excellent comedic young adult author I've ever seen.

Jenny McLachlan is in a league all of her own.

Truly, Wildly, Deeply by Jenny McLachlan was a funny, heartfelt story full of angst and entertaining moments, and at other moments it was a story that depicted seriousness and emotional upheaval. An all-round enjoyable read with likeable characters.
Review copy received from Bloomsbury Plc (UK & ANZ)

Annie has cerebral palsy, she's a fighter whom wants to keep her independence and so when she starts college and catches the eye of Fan a tall handsome stranger, she worries he may be distraction too much as they grow closer together from arguing, dancing and generally having fun together.



As Annie goes through the start and carries on in college the story is great it making her disability not define her but rather just a unique part of her the way anyone can have a unique difference about them!



The coming together of the couple is a great development and seeing how Annie progressed through making friends especially in a new college setting was a positive way anyone else out there can relate to and hope for.



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

This story follows Annie as she settles into a more independent life at 6th form college. Annie has cerebral palsy and independence is something she sets great value on, so much so that having a boyfriend would compromise it. However, when a certain Polish boy, Fab, comes into her life she struggles to come to terms with what this means.
I really enjoyed this book. It' s the first I've read by this author and it was refreshing to find such real characters, all of whom were very likeable with a mature (for 16/17 year olds) outlook on life, friendship and relationships. They also know how to have fun and I would love to meet someone like Fab as he is the most amazing person - full of self confidence for the most part with a very generous personality. I hope he is based on a real person. It was easy to be sympathetic towards Annie too as she learns to balance independence with relationships. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone wanting a meaningful romantic teen read.

I feel like I got through this book in very little time at all. Sometimes you need a story that is just neat and quite sweet as a sort of palate cleanser between heavier reads. I think that is possibly how I would describe this book. This is not the sort of book you turn to if you want a challenge or a lesson. However, this is a nice, short read that is very sweet (verges on sickly but,I think, narrowly avoids it), easy and will keep you smiling. There are some touching moments in this story of teenage love but some lighter laughs to be had as well. I could see this being a good little holiday/beach read for a teen/YA reader. To elevate this further, it could have had supporting characters with a little more depth and might have further explored the Fab's (the male lead) background and family history a little as this feels the wrong depth level when it is built up and incomplete.

In short, a pleasant enough little read.

I was really excited to read this after loving Stargazing For Beginners, earlier this year. I literally jumped when I saw this come up on NetGalley, because no way was I getting to read two new Jenny McLachlan books in a year. This definitely followed in the same style, and there’s so much to love about it.

First of all, Annie, the main character, has cerebral palsy and uses both a wheelchair and crutches in the book. I haven’t read about that many visibly disabled characters, and this is something I hope to change in the coming year. The discussion of Annie’s disability and her mentality surrounded it was really well handled, and although I can’t speak on behalf of those with CP, I felt it was respectful and insightful without trying to tell someone else’s story.

Second, it’s set at a sixth form and the representation of that environment is absolutely spot on. For the classes and cafeteria dynamic, to the desperate need to reinvent yourself and find new friends, I absolutely loved the setting. It took me right back to my sixth form years which were a delight.

Of course, it can’t be set in a school and not have English classes as a prominent feature. Throughout the novel, Annie and the boy she sits next to, Fab, are constantly arguing about Wuthering Heights. It felt like a copy and paste of my own A level lit lessons, as that was one of the texts we studied and I hated it. Jane Eyre, now that’s a book I can get behind. But, it was great to see how the book reflected Annie and Fab’s relationship and how it inspired the final 20% of the book in a very Sara Barnard style way. (Also, the style of the moors makes the cover beautiful!)

Annie and Fab are an interesting couple, mostly because they’re not a couple for most of the book. It’s obvious that Fab likes Annie, but Annie is apprehensive to be in a relationship. There’s a back-and-forth between them about this, and some classic miscommunication that could have been resolved quicker, in my opinion, and maybe I would have liked more reasoning for Annie’s disinterest in romance. She was showing a lot of demiromantic and asexual tendencies, and I got too excited about those possibilities when they weren’t canon.

I loved the scenarios that Annie and Fab were put in, like a costume party, a Polish wedding and a date involving berry-picking. It was all cute and lovely, exactly what I want in a contemporary romance.

Annie’s mum was something special too. Close mother-daughter relationships are my favourite thing (see Radio Silence by Alice Oseman). She was someone that Annie actually talked to about her problems and I loved her parental prominence.

Overall, I really liked Truly Wildly Deeply, if you couldn’t tell already, and give it 4 stars. There were a few things that I didn’t gel with, and there were a few pacing issues but they didn’t take away from how just lovely this book was. If you’re looking for disability rep, a love-tolerate romance and quirky plot points, I’d totally recommend this book.

Annie’s cerebral palsy means she’s never really had much freedom until she starts college where she makes new friends, falls in love with Wuthering Heights and meets Fab who loves the novel too, sparking some great discussions about the novel to the delight of their English teacher and classmates who can’t help wondering if Annie’s found her very own Heathcliffe. Will Annie give up her newfound freedom to be his girl or will one of the other girls grab him first? Gorgeous romance for intelligent teens.

Love story involving a Polish boy and a strong girl with cerebral palsy, discovering first love and Wuthering Heights together.

This book is like candy floss: light, fluffy, and very very sweet. Annie is starting sixth form at a new college miles away from her home, where she barely knows a single person. The challenges of starting a new school are only multiplied by the fact she has cerebral palsy and sometimes has to use a wheelchair.

Jenny McLachlan clearly has a gift for writing extremely likeable characters and no one encapsulates this more than Fab, the energetic, effervescent Polish boy in Annie's English class. In fact everyone in this book is almost universally lovely. That was the only real negative to this book - because all the characters are so nice, and no one has any real problems, there's no conflict in it. But at it's core it is a very sweet little love story and is a perfect antidote to the more serious YA fiction popular currently - a little bit of sugar sometimes never did anyone any harm, after all.