COMING OF AGE A gripping novel of loss, friendship, love and growing up

Gripping women’s fiction about an unusual friendship between a teenage girl and an older woman. This poignant and absorbing novel will take you back to being thirteen again.

A compelling novel of intrigue, growing up, and love for the wrong person by best-selling author Gretta Mulrooney.

Martina is a thirteen-year-old girl struggling to cope with the loss of her father. So her new friendship with the wealthy Cecelia Buchanan offers a lifeline. The older woman opens up Martina to a new world of elegance and beauty, and encourages her artistic talents. But Cecelia shares her flat with the handsome Luca, a younger man, whose motives are not always clear.

This is an intriguing and beautifully written novel about that moment in life when you realise that the adult world is not always what it seems and all the joy and pain of first loss and love.

Great for people who like Hilary Boyd, Jodi Picoult, Anne Enright, or Elena Ferrante

PRAISE FOR GRETTA MULROONEY'S PREVIOUS BOOKS:

ARABY

'Mulrooney has a real gift for dialogue, the words and phrases ring true and make her characters wonderfully real… A tenderly funny and genuinely moving piece. I loved it.’ Fiona Morrow, Time Out

‘A beautifully observed study of reconciliation, Araby makes astute points about conflict and shifting values between generations.’ James Eve, The Times

‘I loved it. It’s such a sweet story, without being in the least sentimental. There are moments when the reader is absolutely there, so acute is this novelist’s ear and eye.’
Margaret Forster

MARBLE HEART

'All of this is wickedly, sharply amusing. But when they really join the party with an act of meaningless terror, Mulrooney shows how constructive and contagious that situation was. And as Nina slowly takes the sweet-natured Joan as her final victim, Marble Heart proves itself to be an excellent lesson in the difference between cleverness and wisdom.' The Times

'Mulrooney slows the pace leading to the shocking denouement by deftly layering each chapter with different character's voices. She shows herself to be an acute observer of all the intricacies that comprise female friendship. By making her readers wait, she not only heightens the gripping tension of her story but positions us with Joan and Nina, who are also waiting - Joan patiently [so she] may be married; Nina fearfully, for her secret crime to be brought into the open.' Time Out