Barr is superb at evoking the heightened emotions of adolescence: the exhilarating thrill of first love, the intensity of fear and rage at adults' deception and the need to discover one's own identity.
With disturbing undertones, vivid characters and authentic dialogue, this is a worthy successor to her wonderful debut, The One Memory of Flora Banks * Daily Mail * Evoking Ella's intoxicating new surroundings while skewering the facile assumptions of "poverty tourism", Barr's second YA novel is a fast-paced, dramatic search for answers to the secrets of the self * Guardian * Colourful setting and pacy plot. If you like dark fiction you'll devour it * Heat * Emily Barr already proved she could hit all the right teen-fiction notes in last year's The One Memory of Flora Banks. This taps the same vein. Ella's parents are doting to the point of smothering but they don't know about the dark and twisty part of her that threatens to destroy everything * i *