SuitabookVicky Angel
Jacqueline Wilson
- Reading
- Consider reading alongside the child rather than treating the book as a straightforward comfort story. Pause after Vicky’s death and during the counselling scenes, and invite reactions without insisting on one interpretation.
- Themes
- Grief and recovery: Jade struggles after Vicky’s death, encounters her continuing presence and eventually works with a grief counsellor. The story presents grief as disruptive and complicated, while showing support and greater self-direction as part of Jade’s recovery.
- Friendship and control: Vicky and Jade are extremely close, but Vicky’s influence includes demands, cruelty and pressure to remain loyal. Closeness is portrayed as emotionally powerful but not wholly healthy; Jade’s growing independence is treated as necessary for moving forward.
- Reality, imagination and the supernatural: Vicky appears and speaks to Jade, while the story leaves open whether this is a real spirit or part of Jade’s experience of grief. The uncertainty invites discussion rather than supplying one definite explanation for what Jade experiences.
- Worth knowing
- Expect a direct encounter with death, intense grief, guilt and a distressing, controlling portrayal of Vicky’s influence. The ending includes emotional danger around Jade’s unresolved feelings and her movement towards recovery.