By Anne Cassidy. Published by Scholastic. ISBN 0-439-97717-7
I loved this book – go out and buy it now!
It’s a tale of a girl, who, when she was ten yers old, killed one of her friends. My creative writing tutor, Charlie, always said to us, Look at the situation from the other point of view. And that’s exactly what this book does. I am always amazed how people get sucked in by a media frenzy, and this shows us what it’s like to deal with, if you are the person everyone’s talking about.
It deals with the girl’s childhood; subtley explaining how things weren’t quite right at home; it deals with how she copes six years later, having been released from the secure unit and needing to begin a new identity. It goes forward and backwards in time seamlessly and eventually our suspense is satisfied and we find out exactly what happened.
Looking for jj is chilling, fascinating and so realistic it makes you scared of that part of you we all have that we bury, but could come out without warning, that makes us suddenly violent. Fantastic writing.
