Reviews

What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible by Ross Welford

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maare's review against another edition

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3.0

Fun, lighthearted read.

dfarhany's review against another edition

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3.0

I was planning to read ‘The 1,000 years old boy’ from this author and came across this book instead. The title immediately reminded me of the book ‘The Invisible Man’ by H.G. Wells that I like and was memorable to me. I instantly knew that both books came from totally different genre but I was feeling a little nostalgic, therefore I chose to read this book by Welford.

In this book, Ethel is our heroine, a 13 years old junior high schooler who has acne problem. She wished for her acne to disappear, instead she got herself disappeared. This was engaging, right?

Yes. The story starts with the first time Ethel got herself disappeared (by first time, I mean there will be more disappearance) and it leads to a question, “what happened before that?”. Then the story goes from way beyond the disappearance. The narrative was from Ethel’s point of view, which I found very suitable. It’s more like an interview with the audience rather than diary-like narration.

Prior to disappearing, she was just an ordinary reserved orphaned student who lives with her grandmother. She was not really described as being bullied (but she was called ‘pizza face’, though), but there were mutual villains at school. She does not have friends, and the one who was willing to hang out with her is the ‘annoying’ new student from London, who by the way, is a boy and will be sharing the adventure together (wink).

Post disappearing, the main changes from Ethel is her clearing acne, her friendship with this new friend, AND her understanding of her parentage. That kinda escalated real quick, right? Yep, that one bothered me the most, though. The idea of her real parentage was a little far from the plot, and the drama around that was not felt. I mean, it’s about family, how do you take that too lightly? And one more thing that I don’t feel too happy with, is when Ethel got herself permanently invisible, the way to bring her back to the land of visibility was… hmm okay, not very interested. But acceptable.

This was a quick read. Page turner-ish, even though I skipped some, since some narration was a little flat and I just couldn’t wait to get to the point. But it is understandable for this type of genre. The plot is crystal clear, there was no noticeable twist. It is very straight-forward, you can guess from the start where the story will go and how.

Some contents are entertaining, and some are a little gimmicky, it was there only to act only as a filler/bridge. But other than what’s on the page itself, I get the feeling that the invisibility aspect is like a literal symbolism to what Ethel was feeling at that time. It was brought about in the book, too, as a ‘joke’. Obviously, at school she was ‘invisible’ and at home she was kept in dark from family’s secret, and how does it not make you feel invisible?

Finally, to me it was an okay read. I didn’t close the book feeling unhappy. If you’re a fan of coming-of-age genre, you should try read it.