The Girls I've Been

"Tess Sharpe’s books are brilliant, she’s such an amazing writer. This one is about Nora, who is the daughter of a con artist. She’s grown up being used as a pawn in all of her mother’s schemes, to con various criminal men out of their money. Throughout her life, she has been forced to become all of these different girls to play a part in her mom’s cons. Each one of them has come with its own trauma and its own lessons for Nora, and she’s taken something from every one of the girls she’s been. So when she finds herself taken hostage in a bank raid, she can draw on her past to find a way out and save herself and the lives of her friends, and hopefully turn it all in her own favour. It’s quite a dark book, because it deals with a lot of trauma, but in such a sensitive, kind and caring way. Even though all the characters in it have a lot of damage from their past, you can really see them healing. Throughout the story, you’ve got flashbacks to all of Nora’s past lives as different girls, and you learn what it was that she went through and what made her into the person she is today. The book talks about therapy as well. I don’t read many Young Adult novels where the characters actually go to therapy and try and work on themselves, so from a mental health perspective it’s a really good book. The book has a good line in it, where the character says: “What didn’t kill me didn’t make me stronger; what didn’t kill me made me a victim. But I made me stronger. I made me a survivor.” That’s a big vibe throughout the book, that Nora is going to survive and she’s going to save her friends, who are basically her found family who she would literally die for. It’s a really tightly plotted book, and the dark subject matter is handled carefully, which I really like. I think Tess Sharpe did an amazing job."