The astonishing new novel from the incomparable, multi-award-winning and Laureate na nÓg Sarah Crossan.
I am not who I say I am.
Marla isn't who she thinks she is.
I am a girl trying to forget.
Marla is a woman trying to remember.
Allison has run away from home and with nowhere to live finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house.
But the house isn't empty.
An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there - and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past called Toffee.
Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be.
But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself -where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who am I, really?
About the Author
Sarah’s novels The Weight of Water, Apple and Rain were twice shortlisted for the CILIP Carnegie Medal and the CBI Book of the Year and in 2016, Sarah won the CILIP Carnegie Medal and CBI Book of the Year as well as the YA Book Prize, the CLiPPA Poetry Award, and many other awards for her novel, One, a novel in verse about a set of conjoined twins.
In 2017 the Dutch translation of One, Een, won the Dioraphte Literature Prize and the German translation, Eins, received a double shortlisting for the prestigious Deutsche Jugendliteraturpreis.
In 2017 Sarah published We Come Apart, her first collaboration with Costa Children’s Book Award winner Brian Conaghan, which was also shortlisted for several awards. Sarah’s latest novel for teenagers, Moonrise, has been shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award, the CBI Book of the Year, the YA Book Prize and an Irish Book Award.
In 2017 Sarah was chosen to represent Ireland for the Hay Festival in Aarhus, Denmark, in a celebration of children’s writing. Her short stories and poems have been included in several collections including Amnesty’s Here I Stand. Sarah is also the author of the dystopian novels Breathe and Resist.
Sarah’s novels have been translated into more than twenty languages and her debut, The Weight of Water, has been adapted for the stage four times. Several of her books have been optioned for film and TV.
Sarah continues to work in schools with teenagers.
