Review: NEVER HAVE I EVER by LV Hay

Complex - and therefore interesting - female characters are very much to the forefront of films and fiction at the moment. So refreshing! Samantha, the protagonist (one would hesitate to say 'hero', I feel) seems to function at several levels: mother, wife and successful crime novelist who seems to have it all, yet she is inexorably drawn back to the Ilfracombe of her teenage years and her difficult friendship group, ruled over by the local queen bee...

The past is indeed another country as Sam navigates memory and her own sense of moral turpitude. The author evokes powerful images from the nineties and an equally impactful picture of how it is to doubt one's own sanity when the truth is a long-buried thing.

This is a real page-turner, especially the last chapter and kept me guessing right to the end. What a fabulous series this would make, especially with the different timelines. Ilfracombe is a character in its own right, reinventing itself in recent years with the advent of Verity in the harbour. The novel is infused with the melancholy sense of those we leave behind and vividness with which our teenage years leave their mark. A triumph. Get it here.