This is a powerful debut from a talented new author in which we are given the highs and lows of an intensely childhood and teenage world, and discover how that world collides against the adult environment. To dramatic and horrific effect.

Leila is the most complex and troubled of the two girls - and perhaps for that reason the most difficult to know and like - but Olivia is an essential still centre to the story. Her growth and development through the book is particularly gripping.

However, my favourite person without a doubt is the step-mother, Katherine - an incredibly human character whom I for one was right in tune with from the first line. I would have loved to have had more of her as, in many ways, the story is just as much hers as it is Leila's. It's a very powerful and very right ending too, and I must admit my reading fingers are twitching for a sequel with Katherine in centre stage!

Certainly a novel that will stay the course.

I loved this novel - I found it powerful and moving, and utterly gripping from the first page.

Me too, it really was fantastic. Funnily enough I kind of disliked Katherine and seemed to side with Leila. And I really felt for gus. Here was a guy who had to deal with triple tragedy (losing three children - one unborn - and a wife and dealing with the fact that his daughter was a murderer), yet at the end there was some hope that he and Katherine could settle down and work things out. A really fantastic book, and I would love to see a sequel too!!

Jason