WHEN I first devoured Jacqueline Wilson’s Girls series, starring teenage best friends Ellie, Magda, and Nadine, I was technically too young to be reading them – which made them all the more thrilling.

Lust. Drugs. Bad boys. Eating disorders. Grief. Sex. Seriously bad boys. Everything a tween girl could need to feel like she was reading a “grown-up book” and learn some important lessons along the way.

By that point, I had already worked my way through scores of Wilson’s other books, which were aimed at a slightly younger audience but explored hard-hitting topics nonetheless.

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This was what I, and many other children, loved about her books: Wilson understood that children live with real issues – divorce, poverty, parental mental illness, neglect, and so much more – and erasing those realities from the stories they read only breeds misunderstanding and shame.

Well, I wouldn’t quite have worded it that way as a child, but I was enthralled by her stories. And I know that my young reading life would have been that much more shallow had I not had the good fortune to grow up when Wilson secured her consistent bestseller status.

So, imagine my delight when I heard that a new instalment of the Girls series would be published this year, and that it would be aimed at adults – and with a sapphic romance to boot.

As if the beloved characters had aged in real-time, Wilson’s Think Again (published September 12) begins on the 40th birthday of her protagonist, Ellie. Still a few years younger than Ellie (I must point out), I was excited to jump back into her world and find out if she had grown up any more gracefully than I have.

It turns out Ellie’s life so far hasn’t gone quite as she once imagined it. She’s no longer with her high school sweetheart (who was an arsehole, so that’s good news), she got pregnant during art school after a one-night stand, had to finish her degree later, and ended up as a teacher at the local comprehensive.

Living out an archetype of the Wilson universe, Ellie has spent her adult life as a single mother in a rented flat on the top floor of a council tower block where the lift is continually breaking down.

She still considers Nadine and Magda her best friends, although she doesn’t see them often and they have even less in common with her than they did as teenagers. True to form, Wilson doesn’t present any of this as bleak or depressing, but simply as facts of life.

In fact, Ellie is proud of the life she’s built, and of her weekly comic strip in The Guardian – until she receives an email on her birthday telling her it’s been axed (way to get me where it hurts, Jacqueline). Ellie’s big 4-0 brings with it several other surprises, including the seeds of not one but two new relationships.

And thus we are propelled into a story which follows Ellie, with much of her old self-doubt and insecurity, as she considers new ways to bring her passion for illustration to life; questions whether she truly has passion for an old crush who makes her feel patronised but happens to be amazing in bed; and discovers parts of herself she never knew existed.

Settling in with a new, yet familiar Jacqueline Wilson book promised to be a nostalgic experience, and it did not fail to deliver.

Despite the colourful language and sex scenes, reading Think Again transported me back to my childhood.

In one scene, as if articulating the thoughts of the reader, Ellie thinks to herself: “I don’t seem to be leading a proper adult life now. I draw, I go to school, I read, I message Nadine and Magda… much the same life I was leading when I was 14 … Get a grip. I’m 40, so I better start acting like it.”

I WON’T pretend that there is anything particularly profound about this book – and I can’t say how it would stand up as an “adult book” without all of the history and baggage and nostalgia attached to it.

But then, isn’t that the point? This is a book that refuses to forget who we were as young girls, and how this shapes who we are today.

It’s a love letter, in many ways, from Wilson to her first cohort of readers, the women who have now aged well beyond most of her characters but who haven’t truly grown up – at least not in the ways we expected.

At points, I wondered if it was odd that a 78-year-old woman should be writing the story of someone who’s just turned 40.

But then I remembered that, as a child, I read books by a woman already in her 40s, and whose words brought me great comfort and excitement.

And that’s exactly how this book functions – as a children’s book for adults, with the reassuring voice of an older woman in your ears, even as you read the thoughts of a character barely older than yourself who has so much left to figure out.

When Ellie worries about what her pristine and orderly new boyfriend will think of her messy, patchwork flat, it’s not because she’s ashamed – it’s because she doesn’t really believe he’s the right fit for her life.

When he describes her as living “like a student”, it’s clear that it is he – and not the jar of Nutella which he so disapproves of – that must go directly into the bin. What a great comfort to me, as a chronically messy, disorganised adult.

Going into this book, I will say that I expected more from the queer storyline (perhaps there will be a sequel).

However, as someone who realised I was gay around the same time I read my last Jacqueline Wilson book, it certainly meant a lot to see characters I grew up with now depicted in same-sex relationships, with zero associated stress or anguish. It meant even more knowing that Wilson herself has been in a relationship with a woman for more than 20 years.

How good it feels when your childhood heroes turn out to be people you can admire as an adult too.

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More than this though, it struck me how much comfort is still to be found in being reminded that nobody your age – whatever that age might be – has it all together.

In an alternative future for the Girls, Ellie, Magda and Nadine might all have been married with dream jobs and children who were little replicas of themselves, repeating history as young best friends. But who wants to read that?

Certainly not the Wilson generation, who grew up learning to appreciate the wonder and joy in the everyday – especially when the everyday might look somehow faulty or inadequate to a less discerning eye.

As millennials who reached adulthood while the world threw obstacles in our way, those lessons might just have proven more vital than Wilson even knew.

So, was this a perfect book; a modern classic? I shouldn’t think so. But it might just have been perfectly imperfect enough for those of us who were meant to read it.