Synopsis: "It wasn't mine. I didn't drop it but the boy said I did. He stood there with the I-know-I'm-right look on his face. I was laughing about it on the outside, feeling like an idiot on the quiet. I had no idea something important just happened." Compelling, intriguing, revelatory - Jenny Valentine's new novel will reach out and grab you by the heart.

Review: Ever since her older brother Jack died, Rowan and her little sister Stroma have been pretty much left to their own devices. Their dad walked out as he couldn’t cope with their mother’s depression and she barely notices that Rowan and Stroma are there. But they manage. And sometimes they even have fun.

When a strange American boy insists that Rowan dropped a piece of paper in the health food shop, she takes it just so he’ll leave her alone and people will stop staring. But Bee was there too and Bee saw what happened. Bee quickly becomes Rowan’s best friend and Carl (her dad) and little Sonny become a second family to Rowan and Stroma.

 The mysterious piece of paper turns out to be a photo negative, which Bee and Rowan develop together. Stunned to discover that it is a photo of Jack, a photo that Rowan has never seen before, never mind owned the negative of, she sets out to find the boy who gave it to her. His name is Harper, he lives in an old ambulance and he’s never seen Jack before in his life. Still insisting that Rowan did drop the negative, they become close. With more stability in her life and certainly more love and laughs than there’s been for a while, the intrigue of the negative still preys on Rowan's mind. And when she finds out where it came from, Rowan finds out more about her brother than she ever dreamed could be true.

This book was truly compelling and beautifully written. I have found sometimes, that writers who use a teenage first person protagonist in order to appeal to their intended audience, sometimes end up with a one-dimensional, trying-too-hard feel to their novel. Not at all true here. The characters were original and delightfully realistic, the plot highly original and totally unpredictable with both laughs and tears. One for more mature younger readers or older readers who enjoy a good story. A book that might appeal to reluctant female teenage readers, perhaps. A wonderfully written novel in every respect.

Nicolette Jones in The Sunday Times

2008-01-13