reviews 14+Secondary/Adult continued What I Couldn’t Tell You HHHH


Faye Bird, Usborne, 488pp, 978-1-4749-0307-3, £6.99 pbk


A crime story and off-kilter romance, What I Couldn’t Tell You is Faye Bird’s second novel. Like the well- received My Second Life, it is tightly-plotted, a tense mystery with an arresting premise that cleverly reflects and develops the themes of the novel. The story follows two sisters: Laura


is out with her boyfriend Joe when something happens that leaves her in a coma. Was it an accident or an act of violence? Joe has vanished and no- one knows. Tessie, the book’s central character, suffers from


mutism and speaks only when she’s at home, and then only when the doors are PROPER SHUT. To Tessie the world is a terrifying place and always has been, ‘there are no words that can make it better’. As the mystery around Laura unfolds readers are very aware of things that aren’t and can’t be said, and Tessie’s inability to speak is often described in very physical terms. A relationship with a new boy at school, Billy, seems to offer her a way out and she recognises that like her he is filled up with things he can’t say. But Billy finds different ways to express his pain. Wondering early on in the story whether Joe put Laura into the coma, Tessie considers whether


hurt someone you really love; by the end, Billy is forced to admit that you can’t love someone you’ve really hurt. A thoughtful,


challenging thriller. A note from the publisher on the back cover warns that this contains strong language and is not recommended for younger readers.


MMa With Malice HHHHH


Eileen Cook, Hot Key Books, 304pp, 978-1-4714-0585-3, £7.99, pbk


With Malice begins with Jill waking up in the hospital, unable to place the series of events leading to her ending up battered and bruised. Frustration builds as Jill comes to the realisation that the previous six weeks and her life-changing trip to Italy have all been lost from her memory as a result of a fatal car accident. As this story unfolds, more and


more information drips into focus as Jill is fighting for Justice against the Italian police for a crime that she is adamant that she could not have committed. What should have been a trip of a lifetime for Jill became her nightmare. Not only did she lose her lifelong best friend, but she may lose her place at prestigious Yale and her budding future. Throughout With Malice, Eileen Cook does an impeccable


keeping readers hooked, the slow release of new information ensured that you did not want to put the book down. In a very Gone Girl- esque narrative, Cook has created a lead character that is generally very unlikeable. With Malice ends on an


job of well-written and you can selective


unexpected twist, this is something that it would have been interesting to see Cook explore further as it seems completely out of character for Jill. This is an entertaining read and it is very difficult to put down, however, it will leave


disappointed once you have finished reading.


Eden Summer HHHHH


Liz Flanagan, David Fickling Books, 274 pp, 978-1-9109-8907-4, £10.99 hbk


On the surface, they’ve got little in common. 15 year old narrator Jess shows up at school wearing ‘paint- spattered boots


red laces, only slightly torn leggings, black hoodie with sleeves pulled down over my tattoos’; she’s a bit of a Goth. Eden’s all ‘shiny blonde hair and long tanned legs’; she even looks good in the ‘crappy green school shirt that makes everyone [else] look sick as a dog’. Yet they are the closest of friends; ‘Eden gave me what I needed, before I even knew what it was’. Little by little, their friendship is


explored. They have grown up in the same town; in all but name, it’s Hebden Bridge (Liz Flanagan’s home town), with its Yorkshire hills and local features such as the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank, where the author worked for four years. Jess and Eden attend a writing course at the Centre which is so revelatory to each of them that the experience needs 20 or more pages. They like the same lad too; Eden’s with Liam at the moment, while Jess is keeping quiet about her


wrestle with past and present. Within the last year, they have each had life- jolting experiences. Jess comes to see that they have both been “stuck in pain and fear. Too stuck to speak up and be seen”. Things start with the biggest of bangs. Eden disappears one night in September, just as the new school year is starting. She’d been out with Liam, but no-one admits to seeing her since. The kids at school, the Head, police, parents – everyone’s on at Jess, threatening her fragile stability; it will be a while before we learn the source of her issues. The pressure on Jess is intense; she can escape only through her fell running, roaming free over the moors. She’s convinced she can find Eden, knowing her ways, her favourite places, her history, her friends and enemies. This is powerful stuff and although David Fickling is marketing the novel as a thriller, it is a search of their inner selves for both girls, as much as a hunt for a missing person. The anxious present is interrupted, illuminated,


and


extended flashbacks. This is Liz Flanagan’s debut novel, written as part of her PhD in Creative Writing. You’d hope her examiners rewarded her for the ambition of her narrative structure, even though its complexity may challenge


needed a second reading to be sure some readers; I by numerous feelings. Above all, both loosely tied with you


feeling a little ARo


of the chronology of events. Within the flashbacks, there are some familiar YA ingredients; a couple of parties, some drugs


students at school, even the kind of empathetic English teacher we first met in Kes long ago. But there is also Flanagan’s


voice: an excruciating account of six or eight drunken youths, male and female, beating up their victim under a late- night railway bridge; sharply observed visits to a tattoo parlour and a reader of Tarot Cards; a chance discovery of a family secret that suddenly seems to make the inexplicable plain; a tragic death.


in the present, the story of how Jess and Eden have been damaged unfolds slowly. Sometimes, Flanagan delays explanations to the reader when her characters are already in the know – a technique which may please some readers while others might think the tension


inevitable consequence of events. More importantly, there is acute sensitivity in Flanagan’s insights into traumatic experiences; and also in the portrayal of the main male character (not often a feature of YA fiction focussing on young women). The author’s afterword mentions that she ‘wrote this book from a place of empathy and solidarity for anyone who has experienced a hate crime’. A sense of such immediacy informs the novel.


GF Thicker than Water HHHHH


Anne Cassidy, Barrington Stoke, 88pp, 978–1–7811-2511–3, pbk


George and Lennie are young adults who lead an itinerant lifestyle. Lennie has unspecified learning difficulties. George works as a DJ. He and Lennie have a dream of opening a shop selling vinyl records. They find lodgings in Hastings in a pub run by Billy Bell, who might be prone to suspect deals. He keeps two dogs in a cage outside the pub.


these young men manage to open their shop? And will they become involved in any illicit activities under the influence of Billy?


Billy’s direction is soon disrupted by arguments that lead to violence. In the end two murders are committed. This reviewer found that the violent conclusion of the book did not present young readers with anything but the bleakest view of how a cognitively challenged young man might be treated in testing circumstances.


RB If I Was Your Girl HHHH


Meredith Russo, Usborne, 320pp, 978-0-8570-7805-6, £7.99 pbk


If I Was Your Girl opens with a letter from author Meredith Russo to her readers explaining that she is a trans woman, and that the book is ‘the story I needed when I was fourteen, confused, and hungry for someone to tell me things were going to be okay.’ The novel that


follows is honest, moving and indeed full of hope. Amanda was born a boy, but has always known she should have been


Books for Keeps No.219 July 2016 31 The team running the pub under The novel poses two questions. Will


Amanda lots of breaks – she’s slim, pretty, passes for a girl with little or no effort. Yet, despite this, readers are in no doubt as to how difficult and even dangerous Amanda’s life is: we see her mum mourning the boy that she’s lost; see how hard it is for her father to accept his child in her new body, and recognise his constant fear that she will be found out and hurt as a result; it’s revealed that a friend from her support group killed herself. It’s made clear too though that Amanda has no choice in living how she does; only as a girl can she be truly herself, and happy. Too many of her friends too have secret lives, hiding who they really are from friends and family, and living half-lives as a result. In one key scene, her mother identifies Amanda’s light-headedness at seeing her new reflection in a mirror not as sickness, as Amanda thinks, but joy. It’s Amanda’s decision to be who she is that allows her a real chance for happiness, and leads her finally to acknowledge that she deserves to be loved.


in Amanda’s story, and even if the book occasionally slips into cliché and some of the supporting characters are stereotypes, it remains powerful, touching and important.


LS It’s impossible not to be caught up Russo admits that she gives contrived, rather than the So, in contrast to the urgent search impressively individual and drink, viciously spiteful


a girl. After a serious suicide attempt she is diagnosed with gender identity disorder and begins the process of physical transition. Her mum supports her but after constant bullying at school and a violent physical attack she decides to move to live with her dad in a small Tennessee town, where no-one knows that she used to be Andrew. She’s quickly accepted, makes friends and falls for Grant, a boy who’s had troubles of his own to deal with. All goes well until the one person she confided in cruelly reveals Amanda’s secret, along with those of some of her classmates, at the school prom.


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