Kevin Lewis (1) (1970–)

Synopsis: Born into a world of abuse, Kevin Lewis has nothing except his determination to someday bring a change to the cycle of poverty in his life.
My Opinion: WOW. I was close to tears so many times, and you really can't help but wish you could have been there for him as a child. So many times, just when you think he's finally made it, someone manages to let him down once more.
I find the way he made it through all this very inspirational, and feel relieved that he did make it.
A story I show more would definitely read again. show less

Not my usual choice of genre but made great reading on a long-haul flight. Kaitlyn is a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, growing up in the worst housing estate in South London. Drugs and alcohol dominate her environment and she ultimately forges a successful career using a nightclub as a cover for drug running. Hard hitting and quite sordid but I couldn't help liking and feeling sympathy for Kaitlyn.

Terrifying and blunt. You see his future mistakes lying like crouching tigers around every corner. You're desperate to reach through the pages and lend a helping hand. Fortunately there are sufficient good guys in the books to stop us slitting our wrists.

Title: FRANKIE

Author: Kevin Lewis

Publisher: Penguin

Edition released: April 2007

ISBN: 978-0-7181-4312-0

373 pages

Review by: Karen Chisholm

If "About the Author" in the press release is to be believed, then in FRANKIE, Kevin Lewis is writing about a world not that far from the one he grew up in.

On a cold London evening Frankie, a young woman with a sad past, now living on the streets, has no choice when a drug dealer, pimp and lowlife targets the very young Mary - a recent street kid, still show more pretty, still not drawn into addiction and degradation. Frankie fights for Mary and the pimp dies. Frankie is now not just on the streets with her own past to deal with, but she's running from the police, from the consequences of the fight.

In the process Frankie mugs another young woman - not realising that Rosemary has just broken into her bosses computer, and the necklace that Frankie grabbed contained the evidence that the Fraud Squad desperately need to keep Rosemary safe as well.

Frankie finds she can run, she can escape from her past and from the events of that night, but only for so long. Sometimes your actions come back to haunt you years later and in Frankie's case, the consequences are more dire when you actually have more to lose.

There's a lot to like in FRANKIE and there's a lot to feel a bit let down by. The direness and desperation of life on the streets is really well drawn in the early parts of the book, and the events that happen to send Frankie on the run tear along at a great pace with good tension and the reader's interest is firmly held. The consequences of what seems like a simple case of purse snatching by Frankie are a sobering twist and Mary's fate is no holds barred confrontational. Frankie is a good character in that she has guts and determination and a willingness to try again, despite everything that has happened and does happen to her.

Possibly that is the source of a feeling of being slightly let down, the events that sent Frankie to the streets were overly predictable - the characterisations of her mother and stepfather too formulaic; the sudden remembrance of evidence of her past too contrived. Frankie's rescue from poverty and despair was a little on the unbelievable side, and her achievement of everything a girl could possibly hope for mildly over-sentimental. The conclusion where everything she's built for herself is threatened and torn apart as a result of the actions of years before, on top of all of that build up just seemed a bit on the melodramatic side. show less