As featured on Radio 4's Woman's Hour
Shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Star Award
Longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize 2016
Hive Rising Writer for 2016
Maeve Maloney is a force to be reckoned with. Despite nearing eighty, she keeps Sea View Lodge just as her parents did during Morecambe's 1950s heyday. But now only her employees and regular guests recognise the tenderness and heartbreak hidden beneath her spikiness.
Until, that is, Vincent shows up. Vincent is the last person Maeve wants to see. He is the only man alive to have known her twin sister, Edie. The nightingale to Maeve's crow, the dawn to Maeve's dusk, Edie would have set her sights on the stage all things being equal. But, from birth, things never were.
If only Maeve could confront the secret past she shares with Vincent, she might finally see what it means to love and be loved a lesson that her exuberant yet inexplicable twin may have been trying to teach her all along.
A powerful and touching debut inspired by the author's autistic sister, perfect for fans of Karen Joy Fowler, Nathan Filer and Maggie O'Farrell.