Clara’s Verdict
Katie Kirby started her career writing the Hurrah for Gin blog about the honest, unglamorous reality of parenting, and that same commitment to laughing at the genuinely mortifying aspects of life carries directly into the Lottie Brooks series. The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of Lottie Brooks is the second book in a sequence that has clearly found its audience — children in the 9-to-12 bracket who find the world equal parts exciting and utterly humiliating, and who need to know that someone else finds it that way too.
Lottie is a wonderfully created character: not the exceptional child-hero of so many middle-grade novels, but an ordinary girl trying very hard to hold things together and frequently failing in the most spectacular manner. The friendship dynamics are handled with unusual honesty for the age group, and the comedy lands because it is rooted in genuine emotional truth.
About the Audiobook
The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of Lottie Brooks is the second book in the Lottie Brooks series by Katie Kirby, published by Puffin in audio form in March 2022 and running to 5 hours and 21 minutes. The story picks up as Lottie returns for spring term at secondary school, determined to leave the disasters of the previous term firmly behind her. No more trying to impress mean girl Amber. No more being known as Cucumber Girl.
A lead role in the spring musical — as a singing crab, naturally — offers Lottie the chance to impress her mega-crush Daniel and redeem herself publicly. But the real drama of the book lies elsewhere: Lottie’s friendships with Molly and Jess are fracturing in ways she doesn’t understand and can’t seem to fix, no matter how hard she tries. Kirby navigates the complexity of friendship triangles among pre-teen girls with considerable skill — she understands that the stakes feel enormous at this age even when they look trivial from the outside, and she treats them accordingly. The book is funny throughout, but the emotional honesty beneath the jokes gives it genuine resonance.
The Narration
Charlie Sanderson narrates, and her performance is a major asset to the audiobook. Sanderson captures Lottie’s voice — enthusiastic, slightly anxious, prone to spectacular flights of wishful thinking — with pitch-perfect accuracy. She also navigates the ensemble cast of secondary-school characters with confident differentiation, giving each a distinct enough voice that younger listeners can follow the social dynamics without getting lost. The comic timing on Kirby’s jokes is excellent throughout, and Sanderson clearly has an affection for the material that comes through in the delivery. At just over five hours, this is an ideal length for the target audience.
What Readers Say
The audiobook holds a rating of 4.8 out of 5 from 3 listeners on Audible UK. The reviews paint a consistent picture of a book beloved by children in the 9-to-12 range who get through it at impressive speed. Reviewer Penny noted her daughter “wizzes through them, often laughing out loud”, while Ms JH reported a nine-year-old finishing it quickly and asking for more. Jonkins gave four stars rather than five but confirmed a ten-year-old had enjoyed it thoroughly and they had purchased the rest of the series — suggesting that the slight reservation was with the adult rather than the intended audience.
Who Should Listen?
Children aged 9 to 12, particularly those navigating the social complexities of secondary school for the first time. It is a particularly strong recommendation for reluctant readers who find longer fiction daunting — the episodic structure and consistent humour make this very approachable. Parents will also enjoy it alongside their children and may recognise the social dynamics from their own school days with slightly rueful recognition. If you are buying for a child who has already devoured the first Lottie Brooks book, this is an easy decision.
Kirby’s background as a blogger writing honestly about the messy reality of parenthood and childhood gives her a credibility with young readers that more polished, distanced authors sometimes lack. Lottie feels like a real child rather than an authorial construction, and her failures are embarrassing in the specific, recognisable way that actual eleven-year-old failures are embarrassing — not dramatic or plot-convenient, but small and squirm-inducing and deeply human. The book is also notably free of the moralising that occasionally plagues middle-grade fiction: Kirby trusts her readers to draw their own conclusions from events, which is the right call at this age.
Listen to The Catastrophic Friendship Fails of Lottie Brooks on Audible UK — the perfect audiobook for anyone who has ever been a gloriously imperfect twelve-year-old.
