'''Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2016'''
Yasmin is fifteen and seriously overweight - her capacity for consuming food will amaze and sicken. She's bullied at school and even her own mother finds her just a little bit weird: let's not go into what her stepfather thinks about her. Her father died a while ago, but Yasmin has never really come to terms with his death and still has the feeling that everything would be OK if only Terry was still around. There's a girl in Yasmin's class called Alice and Yasmin is so in awe of her that she stalks her. One day, in the school playground, she spots a man watching Alice as carefully as she does and becomes obsessed by the idea that the man is going to abduct Alice.
I listened to an audio download narrated by Katy Sobey and it was first class. All the different voices were well distinguished and I was never in any doubt about who was speaking. Particularly impressive was the way that Yasmin's first-person narrative was distinguished from her speaking voice - a nice touch. Sobey also captures the teenage self pity in Yasmin's voice without allowing it to go over the edge into caricature. This is the point at which I usually thank the publishers for sending a copy of the book to the Bookbag, but I bought the download and thought it money well spent.
''Things We Have In Common'' is on one of the [[Costa Book Awards 2015|2015 Costa shortlists]]. For more from that list and available in audio we can recommend [[The Green Road by Anne Enright]] and [[A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson]]. {{amazontext|amazon=1782115943}}