Will I love Cuckoo in the Nest?

I simply loved this book. It took me straight back to the long, hot summer of 1976 and to the confusing feelings around being a teenager. The smell of phone boxes, flares, awful hair – it was all there.

The main character, a 14-year-old would-be poet, has lost her mother and is living with her alcoholic father. She’s an attractive and engaging character, and when she was fostered by a local family, I assumed her life would get better. Not the case. The teenage daughter loathes her, and there are more secrets in this respectable family than in her own.

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The book is excellently written and very readable. Fran Hill seems to speak from experience.

The book is about fourteen-year-old Jacky, who barely survives under the ‘care’ of her dissolute alcoholic father. So, Social Services move her to a first-time foster family. Their daughter, Amanda, of similar age, resents Jacky’s presence and does her level best to get rid of her.

Ostensibly innocuous actions and remarks vividly reveal the character and feelings of the clashing teenagers and their far-from-innocent parents. Not all the loose ends are tied, but I felt drawn into the complicated family atmosphere and enjoyed discovering… show more.

This quirky debut novel features one of my favourite ever heroines.

Fourteen-year-old Jackie is a funny, feisty would-be poet, who finds herself a fish out of water when she's placed with a foster family very different from her own, with a teenage daughter who hates her. It's set in 1970s England, when I was the same age as Jackie is, so it was a lovely nostalgic read.

It's based on the author's own experience of being fostered, and knowing that made the story even more poignant - it made me laugh and cry.