My Best Fiend

Fiend #1

by Sheila Lavelle

Angela is Charlie's best friend, or best fiend as Charlie accidentally wrote in her essay. But fiend is probably a better word, as it's Angela who puts a spider in Miss Menzies' sandwich, and plasters glue all over Laurence Parker's chair... Angela has a knack of getting Charlie into heaps of trouble but friend or fiend, life is never dull for Charlie when Angela is around!

Genres: Childrens

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1980

Reviews

[Vera · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books again, were my childhood. I still read them now in my twenties. They are short stories, so you can literally pick out your favs, or read through them all, depending on your mood. I know it's really hard to find these books in print now, but one day, I fully plan on buying the entire series and keeping them proudly on my bookshelves. Best friends (or fiends!) Charlie and Angela always get up to a lot of mischief, and Angela is that crazy, daring BF we all would've gravitated to when we were kids! Though sometimes she's malicious too. But I love how some of Angela's plans backfire, and some don't, so you really don't know what you're going to get!

[Reet78]

This is the first book I ever read on my own. I borrowed it from the school library. I had no idea what a FIEND was, I remember thinking they may have misspelled it:) Don't really remember if it was any good or not, but I was very proud carrying around my first non-picture book!

[G. Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great kids book

[Hooper Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was quite funny and I enjoyed it.

[Natalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fabulous ‘My Best Fiend’ series is based around ‘Charlie’ a girl who has a rather spiteful best friend named ‘Angela’. Angela is constantly out to ruin things for Charlie an example being the time Angela makes such a big deal about how ‘last season’ Charlie's hand-me-down designer bag is, and graciously swaps it with one of hers... because she really wanted it all along. Angela is also very good at getting Charlie in trouble be it through putting spiders in people’s lunch, throwing tantrums or being cheeky in class and laying the blame on Charlie. Angela ALWAYS appears to get what Charlie wants which leaves Charlie feeling rather hard done by and worst of all of Charlie’s attempts to get as far away from Angela as possible seem to fail miserably. However don’t worry as Charlie’s attempts at getting her own back (when she eventually does) are rather riveting. The first book in the series ‘My Best Fiend’ explains how Charlie miss-wrote friend in an essay at school but soon found that she had in fact used the correct term ‘fiend’ to describe her best friend Angela with. However as Charlie and Angela always end up having lots of fun together they would never stop being best friends. I think this book may particularly appeal to children (girls more so) aged 5-8 as they too may have experienced ‘toxic’ love hate friendships.

I loved the My Best Fiend series of books by Sheila Lavelle so much that after reading them through a few times I recall my mum bought me the audio tapes to listen to on long car journeys – they were read so beautifully by Judy Benett that even my parents could tolerate listening to them.