Two Moons

It is the summer of 1959 and Sidonie is coming up to her sixteenth birthday and to the first anniversary of her mother's death. She is still struggling to cope with her sense of loss as, in their different ways, are her father and older sister: all of them, she realises, are 'acting as if everything's perfectly fine when everything's quite hopeless'. Set in a lakeside community on the Canadian-American border, Brooks's novel moves touchingly between this present sadness and a happier past, with particular focus on how Sidonie's perception of both is affected by young Kieran's arrival from Toronto. It will be a great read for long summer days when school is out and the world seems tantalisingly full of romantic possibilities.