This was a great novel, easy reading, intriguing and a great sense of place. Evans writes the feeling of returning to a town you have outgrown but that is full of nostalgia really well, as well as the teenage experience, naively vowing never to ‘end up like that’ with the naive, surface level view of life that adolescents seem to have.
The protagonist left his hometown at the age of 18 with the intention of never returning, around 15 years later he is compelled to go back and deal with the reasons and people he left. It isn’t either a thriller or a mystery/crime novel but it has touches of both. It manages a slow reveal while still questioning how much home and roots affect who you are.
This was a proof copy from 2012 when I worked in Waterstones
