British children’s author Jacqueline Wilson is back with a sequel to the Girls series

British author Jacqueline Wilson, renowned for her children’s books that tackle profound and challenging themes, is back with an exciting new release — Think Again.

The Double Act author’s latest book is the fifth novel in her hit Girls series and comes 22 years after the last one, Girls in Tears, was published. Unlike the rest of the series, Think Again is for adult audiences.

The earlier books followed 13-year-old Ellie and her best friends Magda and Nadine as they navigated their teen years, friendships and insecurities. In Think Again, the protagonist is now 40, single, has a daughter at university and works as an art teacher, while part-time freelancing as an illustrator.

According to The Guardian, “Ellie encounters two people who will change her life, along the way navigating doubts, desires and dreams — some new and some not too dissimilar to when she was 14. She’s achieved a lot but she definitely doesn’t ‘have it all’ by 40.”

Ellie is overwhelmed by loneliness and the sense of being left behind — feelings all too familiar to both millennials and Gen-Z, who have grown up reading Wilson’s work. In her signature style, the author once again confronts her readers with the hard realities of life.

“The most poignant part of the reunion, though, comes with the knowledge that Wilson’s own life has influenced her work — particularly stories about difficult childhoods,” The Guardian reports.

“It wasn’t a terribly sad, deprived childhood, and there were some happy times, but my parents hated each other,” Wilson told Radio 4 in 2022. In 2020 she disclosed that she had been living with her partner, Trish Beswick, for the past 18 years. The experience evidently shapes a queer love story in Think Again.

Wilson, in an interview with the Irish Examiner said there was more freedom in writing an adult book than a children’s book.

“If Ellie or any of the girls does something stupid or worrying, you don’t have to make it very, very clear, or even cut that bit in tremendously quickly, because you might influence some child with a children’s book. If you’re an adult reading it, you know for yourself what you feel would be sensible or not sensible,” the author said.

According to the publication, the ending of Think Again is slightly open, but Wilson has no current plans to continue Ellie’s story further. However, the author is not slowing down any time soon.

“I do still get ideas, thank goodness — they’re not quite as much as they used to be, but they’re still there,” Wilson admits. “While I can still string two sentences together, I’m not giving up.”