Categola

must read!!!!(Rating: 5)
I have just started camping and thought i would give this book ago. I laughed out loud. a very funny and well written book. Well Done Emma.

funny ,great for your holiday(Rating: 5)
I took this book to read on holiday, and had been told it was very funny, just what I need at the moment. I have not finished it yet (holiday home had another book I wanted to read!) but so far it has been great. Everyone thinks I am mad as I sit with my nose in it and I am laughing out load!! Great light read

Superb book(Rating: 5)
I loved this book being around the same age and going on plenty of camping/caravan holidays in the 70's/80's as a kid it really resonated with me, i genuinely laughed out loud on several occasions and as with all good books cursed the fact that it ended, i hope the next one is not that far away thank you Emma for a thoroughly entertaining book...

Implausible(Rating: 2)
I am shocked to see so many five star ratings for this book. I thought it is an average book at best, some of the 5 star reviews seem to suggest that the Country has found another Shakespeare/Pinter/Plater/Bennett.

The problems I have the book is the implausibility of it all. I can accept a couple of `disasters' happening to the family over the years but on every holiday? If the book had been marketed as comedy fiction I could have accepted the events as funny, but after a while I just started to question whether they actually happened as described - if they did the author and her family must have broken many mirrors over the years.

I have two other issues. The first is how the conversations are remembered word perfect - 30 plus years later. No one has that great a memory. You can argue that it is the writer's method of telling the story but it doesn't sit right - and neither does the way she calls her parents by their first names, rather than Mum and Dad. Again, it just doesn't gel for me.

DREADFUL..(Rating: 1)
As a child growing up in the seventies and with every holiday being spent under canvas I picked up this book expecting it to be filled with wit, warmth and nostalgia. Wrong! It is truly dreadful. The first chapter reads okay, it's not brilliant belly laugh funny but it will probably make you smile, after that it is down hill all the way. There is little to distinguish each chapter from the next - pack tent, drive to destination in old car, pitch, then follows poo, pee, vomit and/or weather related incident, swear a lot, go home. It is all very implausible and just made me cringe at the crassness and stupidity of 'Mum and Dad.' There is also a chapter in the book where the author describes an incident of assault which in this context is inappropriate in the extreme. I am astounded by all the five star rave reviews on amazon, given that its each to their own I would recommend looking this up in a bookshop and flipping through a few of the middle chapters first before buying.