Fourteen-year-old Prue has been home educated all her life. She knows she and her sister Grace are different to most teenagers, but any attempt to be ‘normal’ are met with fury and outrage by their father. When he suffers a stroke, Prue discovers what it’s like to have freedom.

With their father in hospital, the girls are sent to the local comp for the first time. While Grace quickly makes friends, Prue struggles to adapt. She quickly finds refuge in the art department, where she makes friends with the handsome young art teacher, Rax. He asks her to baby-sit for his children, and as the job becomes a regular appointment, Prue starts to live for Friday nights. Soon Prue’s fallen head over heels. Although Rax resists her, before long he’s confessed he likes her too. But their love can’t last, and when they are discovered embracing in the art room, Prue is excluded from school.

The characters in this book are well rounded and believable, as one would expect from a writer of Wilson’s calibre, and the scenes with the family are heart-wrenching - you feel for the girls who are struggling to find their identities with such a tyrant for a father. You can also totally empathise with the way Prue idolises Rax, the one stabilising influence in a world that has suddenly turned topsy-turvy. However, I found it very alarming when the feelings Rax had for Prue turned out to be real, to the extent of them kissing. It’s not uncommon for teenage girls to have crushes on their teachers, and I wondered about the effect of sending such a message out to girls. It is, of course, extremely rare, for teachers to reciprocate feelings for fourteen-year-old girls (especially if they are married with families) and I just wonder about the implications of showing girls that teachers are receptive to such relationships.

2007-12-31