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Girlhood by Cat Clarke


Real, compulsive and intense: Cat Clarke is the queen of emotional suspense. For fans of Paula Hawkins, Gillian Flynn, Megan Abbott and Jandy Nelson.

Harper has tried to forget the past and fit in at expensive boarding school Duncraggan Academy. Her new group of friends are tight; the kind of girls who Harper knows have her back. But Harper can't escape the guilt of her twin sister's Jenna's death, and her own part in it - and she knows noone else will ever really understand.

But new girl Kirsty seems to get Harper in ways she never expected. She has lost a sister too. Harper finally feels secure. She finally feels...loved. As if she can grow beyond the person she was when Jenna died.

Then Kirsty's behaviour becomes more erratic. Why is her life a perfect mirror of Harper's? And why is she so obsessed with Harper's lost sister? Soon, Harper's closeness with Kirsty begins to threaten her other relationships, and her own sense of identity.

How can Harper get back to the person she wants to be, and to the girls who mean the most to her?

A darkly compulsive story about love, death, and growing up under the shadow of grief

My thoughts
I loved this book for several reasons.

Firstly I love love love boarding school books. It's something I loved reading about in books as a child and it is still something I adore. I like how it changes relationships and situations often making them more intense because of the close quarters the characters are living in and this book was no exception seeing how the characters interacted and how things played out.

I like that this book doesn't hold back and tackles some real issues in a thoughtful way in this case around the impact the death of Harper's twin has on her. 

As a side note I was very excited to receive this book because one of the characters is named after me which my inner book geek is so ridiculously geeky about ever time I think about it.

All in all I really enjoyed it.

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