This debut novel deals with a number of highly relevant issues, and is written in a very easy-to-read style that will appeal to those teenagers who want to read something topical but don’t necessarily want to have to read a lot.
In Mathieu’s book we are told about Alice Franklin, a young lady who has always been a little different to her peers. Rumours circulate that she had sex with two boys in the same night at a recent party, and so begins a rather inevitable process of name-calling. The conflict between how male and female behaviour is regarded is important, but the real story comes from the fact that not long afterwards one of the boys – a local football hero – is killed in a road crash and it seems Alice was sending sexually explicit messages to him just before he died.
While the exploration of attitudes to teenage sexuality and reputation is pertinent, I found the novel itself quite hard to like as much as others I’ve read on similar topics. We are told about Alice and what happens through the eyes of everyone else, so I think it’s difficult to feel any real empathy with this character. A lot of the other characters who feature in the story are fairly unpleasant, and the hypocrisy of their attitudes annoyed me (I’m sure this was intentional).