After the death of her father and the breakdown of her relationship with Seth, Clemency Smittson - Smitty - decides to start afresh and moves to Brighton. But with her mother in tow it's not exactly the clean break she imagined. And life is about to get more, not less, complicated when she discovers the birth parents who gave her up for adoption and an ailing grandmother who sees Clemency as the answer to her prayers. As ever, readers get more than they bargained for with Dorothy Koomson in a story that is unpredictable, emotional and dramatic. Far from a simple adoption narrative, the story goes off into uncharted territory and whilst this is refreshing, there's also a sense in which it is a bit of an imaginative leap. At the end of the novel there are still so many matters unresolved, that despite it being over 400 pages long, in some ways it feels as if the story is only just beginning. Yet, Koomson continues to breathe new life into a genre that she has really made her own and she always keeps readers on their toes. This is issue-driven, thought-provoking fiction that doesn't fail to engage its audience in the lives of its characters and the moral questions it poses. (JC)
That Girl From Nowhere, by Dorothy Koomson, is touted as an emotional thriller about love, identity and the meaning of family. The summary says: "'Where are you coming from with that accent of yours?' he asks. 'Nowhere,' I reply. 'I'm from nowhere.' 'Everyone's from somewhere,' he says. 'Not me,' I reply silently. Clemency Smithson was adopted as a baby and the only connection she has to her birth mother is a cardboard box hand-decorated with butterflies. Now an adult, Clem decides to make a drastic life change and move to Brighton, where she was born. Clem has no idea that while there she'll meet someone who knows all about her butterfly box and what happened to her birth parents. As the tangled truths about her adoption and childhood start to unravel, a series of shocking events cause Clem to reassess whether the price of having contact with her birth family could be too high to pay. That Girl From Nowhere is out in April 2015.