This was probably great for the target audience, but I couldn't get into this at all. I was expecting something that would be wonderful for anybody to read, adults and children alike, as the best of books are, but no. This is pitched young, and nothing else. To the target reader, then, this is a semi-relatable tale, told by a semi-relatable kid, who's nervous of absolutely everything and in absolutely every situation, semi-forced to go to Italy for a villa holiday with a 'friend' from school. To the adult this is a weakly-plotted splurge of observational stand-up ("aren't airport shops bad? Why can't I be an adult and allowed to swear?" etc ad infinitum), featuring the world's least likeable child.
So by the time we do finally see what the book is actually about – and it's not a child's-eye view of adults on holiday, or even how our hero finally gets to talk to girls and not come out of it with egg on his face – we've had too many chances to ditch this, and no foreshadowing that there is a different aspect to it all. It's about letting go and letting life pull you along, and how you have a choice in how firmly you doing any steering. And how adults (and boy the adults here need a slap just as much as the sad sack kid does) don't know it all. That could have come across marvellously – and I dare say if my balls were still dropping it might have done to my taste – but at this remove, it wasn't much fun at all. The kid's narration was so full of verbal diarrhoea, and lists to pretend it wasn't just a stand-up routine, I ended up skimming this in record time. One and a half stars from me, a potential four stars from my younger, alternative-universe self.