Sorry Isn't Good Enough

(Paperback)

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Description

No one can know what happened that summer...

'Gripping and surprising, and at turns chilling and heartbreaking. Stephanie's story will stay with me for a long time.' MELANIE GOLDING

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It is 1966, and things are changing in the close-knit Napier Road. Stephanie is 9 years old, and she has plans:

1. Get Jesus to heal her wonky foot

2. Escape her spiteful friend Dawn

3. Persuade her mum to love her

But everything changes when Stephanie strikes up a relationship with Mr Man, who always seems pleased to see her. When Dawn goes missing in the woods during the World Cup final, no one appears to know what happened to her - but more than one of them is lying.

May 1997. Stephanie has spent her life trying to bury the events of that terrible summer. But when a man starts following her on the train home from London, she realises the dark truth of what happened may have finally caught up with her...

Reviews

Told from the perspective of a nine year old embroiled in tragedy that shapes her whole life, childhood memories carried with her that resonate on so many levels, it evokes the past in glorious technicolour. I absolutely loved it and cannot do justice to the goldenness it contains, bitter-sweet and touching. * Amanda Reynolds *
Wonderful. Literally (literally!) couldn't put it down, to me it reads like Joanna Cannon/Maggie O'Farrell with a slice of Stand by Me era Stephen King. * Hayley Hoskins *
Sorry Isn't Good Enough was gripping and surprising, and at turns chilling and heartbreaking. Stephanie's story will stay with me for a long time. * Melanie Golding *
What a wonderful book; it swept me back to the sixties and my own childhood. Touching and gripping - a story that will stay with me. * Jackie Kabler *
The heart of this emotionally-literate coming-of-age story is Stephanie who, with her eccentric take on the world, yearning for love and unexpected bursts of wit, is as believable as she is sympathetic. What seems like a gentle story on first glance soon reveals itself to be much more: full of life's sorrow, joy and misunderstanding. I always love Jane Bailey's books and this is her best yet. * Kate Riordan *
Richly-textured, compelling, emotionally complex. Squeezes your heart until the very last page. * Tammy Cohen *

Author Bio

Jane Bailey was born and brought up in Gloucestershire, where she now lives. She has written seven novels, including Lark Song, What Was Rescued and Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven, and has been shortlisted for the Dillons Fiction prize and the RNA award. She has edited four anthologies of work by young people as Writer-in-Residence for Cheltenham Festivals, First Story and Gloucestershire Hospitals Education Service.