Despite diary entries being traditionally deposits for someone’s most innermost thoughts, I rarely felt like I was inside Shiraz’s private life. The slang will be an impediment for some readers, but there's an equally funny glossary in the back. Her year at school does a two-week work stint, and while working at a mind-numbingly boring job at a packing plant, Shiraz decides she will try to do the work at school. The feminist within me is disgusted and Shiraz’s own sister’s feminist opinions to nothing to negate that.

She may irritate you at times with her disregard for authority, but in the end, she does choose the right path and you want to cheer for her when she does!But it balances nicely on the fine line between satire and a genuine story that cares about its characters.

An attempt to publish the books overseas in the United States was largely unsuccessful and only the first two books, re-titled for American publication, were released. That seems to be a big part of Shiraz’s mentality, but unfortunately, that was one of the only real desires I could pinpoint for her character, and getting to the bottom of the “real” Shiraz was an entirely difficult task. Dent captures the Chav dialect and cadence (to this American reader, at least) while still making it readable.Things get tricky when Shiraz ends up getting a job as PA to a Premier league footballer and his wife - Carrie had her heart set on it and she's furious, but how could Shiraz turn it down? I have just spent two weeks of sheer unmitigated hell in a half-finished hotel, what was advertised as 'the most stunning jewel in the crown of this fabulous island. Which we've seen - Jeff Foxworthy has a whole slew of "redneck" books, about which, obviously, the less said the better. From 2011 to 2017 she wrote a restaurant column for the Evening Standard, and became the Guardian's restaurant critic in 2018. Entertaining with lots of English slang that really did require the glossary at the back of the book, at times!