Uncommon Heroine.

One day, Yasmin sees a man watching Alice. Then she sees him the next day. And the next ... Then Alice goes missing. The police get involved and her stepdad Gary is arrested …

The first-person narrator of this novel, Yasmin Laksaris, is a bullied sixteen-year-old schoolgirl who is obsessed with two things: food and the unobtainable Alice Taylor, a fellow pupil. Alice is all the things Yasmin is not: attractive, a good student? and popular. But when Alice goes missing, does Yasmin know more about it than she lets on?

The suspense in this novel relies on what Yasmin will do next and how much – if anything – she has to do with Alice’s disappearance. Yasmin is the very definition of an unreliable narrator and as she is the only perspective we see throughout the book, we can only know what she is willing to let on to us, the reader.

Yasmin’s mother and step-father are not bad people or parents per se, but they don’t take much interest in her life. The book is basically a character study of what social isolation can do to vulnerable people – in this case, teenagers – who don’t always fit into the norm.

This a very strange, creepy book which leaves you feeling very unsettled. It is not completely satisfying and the plot could do with a few more dramatic incidents here and there but his novel is about atmosphere and this is maintained all the way through the book to its enigmatic conclusion.

Overall, this is a bravely different kind of psychological suspense novel that spurns all the domestic-drama clichés of modern times – Lord save us from the nuisance anonymous phone calls and mysterious cars following the plucky heroine in the dead of night – in favour of a character study of a normal girl made strange and confused by neglect and social isolation.

4/5