How far do bilingual readers identify with the "implied readers" of the texts they read? This article explores this question through a quantitative analysis of the reading habits of a sample of 100 English secondary-school students, mainly from southern Asian backgrounds. Particular focus is given to the way a bilingual reader may or may not be able to identify with the implied reader in the particular texts to which they are exposed, and attendant implications. It was found that reading in the mother tongue played only a small part in the lives of the majority of respondents. It is argued, therefore, that the dominance of Anglo-American culture in the lives of these students (and, indeed in the lives of bilingual adolescents across many parts of the world) places pressure on the home language and culture of bilingual adolescents to compete with the experience offered to them, at a time when they are already striving to form an individual identity. Parallels are drawn between the experiences of young Welsh-English bilinguals and those of young Urdu/Punjabi-English bilinguals, and recommendations are made based on the current successes of the model of publishing children's fiction in Wales. The students in this study are of secondary school age, but the analysis and implications have a wider relevance.