Description

Discover the messy and joyful new novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Think Again; a nostalgic adult sequel to the beloved classic, The Illustrated Mum!

Dolphin Westward is done putting everyone else first – especially her unpredictable mother, Marigold. But how do you break the habit of a lifetime?

When she meets Lee, the kind single dad next door, she glimpses the wholesome family life she’s always wanted. Then Joel crashes into her world – a rugged, magnetic actor who makes her feel truly seen – and suddenly Dolphin finds herself torn between two very different futures.

It’s not long before everything begins to unravel, and her picture-perfect life feels further away than ever.

Faced with losing it all, can she learn to stop chasing perfection and start being herself?

READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH PICTURE IMPERFECT:

‘Realistic, sharp-eyed. . . I loved it and didn’t want it to end’ – Katie Fforde

‘Jacqueline Wilson is a national treasure! Picture Imperfect is at once beautiful, sad, and uplifting’ – Alice Winn

‘I devoured this entire book in one sitting . . . it catapulted me out of a reading slump’

‘There’s something so comforting about reading a Jacqueline Wilson book . . . You can just sink into it’

‘Picture Imperfect is everything I didn’t know I needed: tender, messy and deeply relatable’

‘A nostalgic hug from the past’

‘I obviously hoovered it up. There’s something about the way Jacqueline Wilson writes that gets me racing through every page!’

‘I absolutely adored diving back into the world of The Illustrated Mum. . . It brought all the nostalgia. I could not put this down’

Instant Sunday Times bestseller, August 2025

Publisher Review

Praise for Jacqueline Wilson * : * A read-in-a-day comfort book. * Independent * Nuanced and refreshing…beautifully told. * Guardian * This story offers grown-ups what Wilson has long offered teenagers: comfort, sanity and delight in the ordinary. * Daily Mail * Jacqueline Wilson taps into the joys and pains of women everywhere. * Dawn O’Porter * Wilson knocks it out of the park once again…a moving story that is as fun to read as it is meaningful. * Alice Winn * She is a national treasure. * i News * Realistic, sharp eyed…I loved it and didn’t want it to end. * Katie Fforde *