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London Belongs To Me


This is my non spoiler book ramble for London Belongs To Me by Jacquelyn Middleton, which I absolutely loved.

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Your flight is now boarding! Join Alex Sinclair for a life-changing, trans-Atlantic journey. London Belongs to Me is a coming-of-age story about friendship, following your dreams, and learning when to let go … and when to hang on.

Meet Alex, a recent college graduate from Tallahassee, Florida in love with London, pop culture, and comic cons. It’s not easy being twenty-one-years-old, and Alex has never been the most popular girl. She’s an outsider, a geeky fangirl … with dreams of becoming a playwright in a city she’s loved from afar, but never visited. Fleeing America after a devastating betrayal, she believes London is where she’ll be understood, where she belongs. But Alex’s past of panic attacks and broken relationships is hard to escape. When her demons team up with a jealous rival determined to destroy her new British life, Alex begins to question everything: her life-long dream, her new friends, and whether London is where she truly belongs.

I really loved this book, I found the main character Alex so relatable with where she is at with her life and the emotions she goes through in this story. The fact that she was flawed and geeky I loved because she's not the stereotypical female protagonist and she doesn't hone on how she looks too much either. I also really admired her determination and drive in this book though at points it wavered. The main supporting characters in the form of friends Lucy and Freddie were amazing, I wanted them as my friends because the friendship these two struck up with Alex was so heart warming to see because they did really care about her and wanted to help her achieve her goals in life and vice versa with Alex doing something amazing for Lucy in the story not because she felt obligated to do it but because she wanted to and I thought this was really great type of friendship to portray. The love interest in this story was such a lovely guy and the romance in this was played out so well. There was no insta love, they don't meet and jump into a relationship, it's a slow burning relationship, he's not a stereotypical love interest. He also didn't get in the way of anything else such as Alex's friendships and her ambitions of being a playwright. For once we get a love interest who is encouraging and again wanting to help Alex improve herself. Other notable amazing side characters include Alex's Dad and her grandmother. I don't think much of the rival in this book nor of Alex's friend Harry which I'm not going into because of spoilers but I'm not a fan.

I liked the time frame of this book spanning the first year of Alex's life in London and the highs and lows she goes through and how close she gets pushed to going home because of situations that happen. It was nice to see her grow throughout this book and find her voice and make changes for the better for herself instead of sitting around and waiting for opportunities she kept going with help from her friends. We see so many issues dealt with properly that we don't overly get shown in full force in some books such as anxiety, particularly panic attacks and we see Alex go into detail about why she has them etc. Also we have LBTQ character which isn't overhyped it's mentioned and accepted and we move on. I also want to mention the detail about London in this book even down to the tube journeys Alex was taking. I love London so much but there were places in this book I want to visit so it gave me wanderlust and want to explore London very differently.

Overall I gave this 5/5 stars, it was a heart warming gorgeous debut novel from Jacquelyn Middleton. I would 100% recommend this book to my friends.

I hope you have enjoyed this, until next time

Stacey x

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