Jacqueline Wilson announces adult sequel to The Illustrated Mum

Jacqueline Wilson has written a sequel to one of our favourite books

We treasured our copies of Double Act, chatted to our friends about The Story of Tracy Beaker on the way to school, and renewed our love of Wilson's work when she released Think Again last year.

The author is now releasing her second adult novel and it is a sequel to the bestseller The Illustrated Mum.

The sequel is called Picture Imperfect and it will be published on August 28th, 2025.

Jacqueline Wilson published The Illustrated Mum in 1999, but the author felt like the time was right to revisit the story.

She told Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2:

"There are two of me, actually, the one that writes the children's books - and I love writing children's books, still going to - but it's been so exciting in the last year, I revisited three teenage girls that I'd written about in the 1990s and now, God help them, they're pushing 40. I thought, 'What fun it would be to actually write about them in an adult novel."

"One of the books that people have mentioned over the years is The Illustrated Mum, about a mum who has bipolar disorder, a lovely mum in some ways, but very unreliable, and you've got two kids, Dolphin and Star, named after the most popular flash tattoos. Now Dolphin is 33, the exact same age that the mum is in the first children's book."

What is Picture Imperfect about?

'Dolphin Westward spent her childhood as the supporting character in the story of her beautiful, wild, volatile mother, Marigold. Now 33, she’s painfully aware that not much has changed. She lives in a tiny bedsit, works in a tattoo shop by day, and collects her illustrated mum from police stations by night.

'Dol yearns to climb out of the rut she is stuck in but has no idea where to begin. Could gardener Lee and his daughter Ava be her chance for a wholesome family life? Or maybe a steamy romance with roguish actor Joel is just what she needs. And what about the offer from her sister Star, now a successful doctor, to move to Scotland and live with her young family?

'As the choices threaten to overwhelm her, will Dol fall into the role of extra in someone else’s story once again – or find the strength to forge a brand new path of her own?'