At the start of a new year when we are all compiling our reading lists either with Goodreads or making our own of the books we would like to read in 2024, I would like to recommend to you one of my own ‘stand out’ books of 2023.

If I could give this book 6 stars or more on Amazon and Goodreads, I would! It had me hooked completely from page one. It’s the sort of book that keeps you reading compulsively well into the night.

A fictional book which is semi-autobiographical, it tells the story of Jackie Chadwick, who begins the book living with her alcoholic father who beats her, before she is placed with a foster family – Bridget and Nick Wall and their daughter, Amanda. Amanda resents Jackie from the start, as a single child and does everything she can to make Jackie’s life difficult. Jackie gets on particularly well with ‘Uncle Nick’ and finds Bridget a little overwhelming. But it transpires that both her foster parents have their own secrets, as Jackie guards hers.

This book is very well written and interspersed with great bursts of humour despite the difficult subject matter, which shows a real talent on the writer’s part.

Author, Fran Hill, says of the book “I was in foster care like Jackie, but the events of the book are complety fictional. I don’t believe I made any enemies of my foster siblings and unlike Jackie, I was not a keen, committed student at school. However the feelings of disorientation and anxiety displacement, were my experiences too.”

I also asked Fran if the Wall family in the book were based on any of the foster families she was placed with. Fran told me, “When I was eleven or twelve years old, I was temporarily placed with a foster family – mother, father and one daughter, so I guess the Wall family is loosely based on them.”

Was it hard to write a book so close to her own experiences? Fran said: “Drawing on my own experiences of being in foster care made the book easier not harder to write. The narrator is fourteen year-old Jackie, and everything is seen from her perspective. I felt authentic in creating her voice because her environment was known to me.”

The book certainly is gripping and perhaps it’s that authentic voice which makes it so. It has obviously captured the hearts of many other readers too with nearly six hundred reviews on Amazon to date and is available in both kindle and audio editions. If enjoy reading this book, a sequel to it will be available early in 2025 and Fran is now engaged in writing the third in the trilogy. Watch this space for more news…