Lost and Found

Who would want to be a character in children’s fiction these days? Some are used as child-spies, others are abused, still others are made to kill their peers and, in this cheery offering, a 13-year-old girl is raped by her music teacher and opts to go through with the pregnancy. Perhaps it was ever thus – but do we really want to keep reading about it?

When his grandmother dies, Daniel feels completely alone in the world. Luckily for him, the new occupants of gran’s house have a beautiful, lively daughter called Jade, whom Daniel quickly befriends. Another member of the household is a toddler called Finn. Only he’s not Jade’s brother. He’s her son. Besotted Daniel is prepared to shoulder her secret but the chance arrival of the absent father threatens to shatter their new-found ‘love’…

This is a disturbing book that doesn’t, I feel, deliver. It fails to address the issue that a child was raped by a person in a position of authority. Characterization of the father, an Irish, pony-tailed musician with symbolically scarlet sweater, is clichéd. The intervention of Sylvia, the clairvoyant, in the horrific events of the end, is far-fetched. Not only that, but the soft focus, Mills and Boon-like cover, does not adequately illuminate the novel’s theme. For all the (teenage) ‘love’ between Daniel and Jade, this is essentially a book about teenage pregnancy and paedophilia.