![]() Nicu and Jess are beautifully realised characters, and the reader wants more for them than the bleak and strangely abrupt ending. But somewhere around the mid-point of the novel the catalogue of disasters befalling the couple feels too relentless, the abuses they suffer too gratuitous. ![]() Each writer has a finely tuned ear for accent and idiom, and the characterisation is pitch perfect. Themes of domestic abuse, violence, bullying, social exclusion, low self-esteem and racism are explored through the dual narratives. Jess and Nicu meet doing community service, find refuge in one another and gradually fall in love. ![]() Jess lives with her mother and abusive stepfather her older brother has moved out, unable to tolerate the situation at home, and she has ‘fallen in with a bad crowd’. Nicu is a teenage boy from Romania, living with his family in the UK while they save enough money to return home and for him to enter into an arranged marriage with a girl from their village. ![]()
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