YA BOOK of the week

THE GREAT GODDEN

by Meg Rosoff, Bloomsbury YA, hardback £12.99, ebook £6.36 ★★★★★

MEG ROSOFF returns with another astute and alluring YA tale, filled with intrigue, and the agony and humiliation of love.

Our narrator and her family are set to spend the long, languorous summer at their ramshackle beach house, reading, boating, sunbathing and playing tennis, alongside their dad’s younger cousin Hope and her boyfriend Mal, who are staying 100m down the beach and planning their wedding.

Then Kit and Hugo Godden arrive, shattering the peace; one by being wildly good looking and charming, the other by being thoroughly offish, and soon it becomes apparent they might just ruin everything.

The Great Godden is totally absorbing, be it in describing sibling hostility, or the effort required to conceal your feelings.

Rosoff perfectly captures the endlessness of summer, and the prickling uneasiness of desire when it’s tangled up in hope.

The dialogue stings with sharpness and truth, and the pace of it is electric.

It’s really quite scintillating.