Gwendolyn P. Pearson is 17 years old and lives in a small Tasmanian town. Gwen and her friends are nearing the end of secondary school and are trying to work out what comes next. Gwen has become very good at not thinking about the tragedies that have happened to her family in the past. Now she lives with her father, step-mother, step-brother and younger sister. When Gwen doesn’t want to think or remember, she runs along the wild beaches of the Tasmanian coast.
But after a disturbance at the cafe she works at, Gwen is finding it harder to not think about her mum and her baby brother Jamie and what happened to them. Then 2 new teenagers come to town, and that just shakes things up even more.
This moving and thoughtfully written book deals the issues of grief, friendship, belonging and small town life beautifully. The characters are complex and just like Gwen, you find out that all is not what it first seems and people are more complex than you think.
Read a Q & A with the author, Eliza Henry James, from the Better Reading website.
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