The Girl Who Wasn't There

Luna, who is aged ten and three quarters and her sister, Aurora, an academically precocious, almost-six-year-old, have moved with their parents to a derelict tower house bought by their father on a whim as a DIY project.

Aurora is delighted at the prospect of living in the tower like a princess but Luna and her mother are rightly worried that it is not structurally sound.  There are also rumours that there is a ghost in the tower.  How true will these rumours be? And how many risks will the family take to achieve their dream of living a real-life fairy tale?

Aurora is described as a very endearing character. This reviewer found Luna, her older and much more sensible sister, to be far more believable. It seems odd that Luna’s new school would allow Aurora, with her significant age difference, to be in her sister’s class, even for a short period.

One of the most interesting facets of the story was that the girls’ father had owned a restaurant but had been forced to close it due to the Covid 19 pandemic. His resulting mental health problems were handled very sensitively but realistically, as he and his wife argued about some of his stranger decisions.

Wilson, normally skilled at dual timeline narratives seems less so in this novel. Insufficient narrative space is given to the former of two time-lines in which a significant event occurs which has a dramatic implications for the later timeline.

Dean’s full page, black and white illustrations add much to the whimsical quality of this narrative