Teenage Katie’s mom, Caroline, resents having to care for her estranged mother, Mary, who has dementia. But for Katie, shunned socially since kissing her former best friend, spending time with the grandmother she is getting to know is a welcome distraction. Katie is trying to wade through her grandmother’s vanishing memory, and butting up against her mother’s unwillingness to talk about the past. But flashbacks illuminate the two women’s divide and the parallels between their lives: Mary and Caroline both feel guilty about a number of things, including choices they made as parents. Katie finds herself drawn to Mary, who is kind, and whose comfortable sexuality as a young woman is the opposite of what Katie feels as she contemplates her attraction to Simona, a classmate rumored to be lesbian. Katie realizes how much between her mother and grandmother has gone unsaid or been misunderstood, and that important things in her own childhood have been kept hidden. This becomes part of the inspiration to speak her own truth as she finds the courage to come out. A quiet yet riveting novel captures the complexities and absolute messiness of feelings among characters who are neither right nor wrong, just vivid and real as they move toward greater openness and acknowledgement of the love they feel. (Age 14 and older)

Three generations of women now live under one roof. Katie's family dynamic takes a dramatic turn when estranged Grandma Mary moves in. But Katie's world had already been falling apart. She kissed her best friend, who now calls her a freak. To cope with fresh wounds, Katie decides to record her grandmother's past in a journal before Mary's memories disappear entirely. Now, unbecoming family secrets are pouring out into the world. The revelation and exposure of old scars might just be what it takes for Katie to tell her family the truth.

2017 Stonewall Honor Award Finalist -- Children/Young Adult, 2016 YA Book Prize Finalist, 2016 Redbridge Book Award, 2016 People's Book Prize Finalist, 2016 BASH Award, 2017 CILIP Carnegie Medal, 2017 Lancashire Book of the Year Finalist, 2017 Mississippi Magnolia Children's Choice Book Award Finalist.

Jenny Downham is a British novelist and an ex-actress who has published award winning books.

England. Originally published in English by David Fickling Books in 2015. Published in the United States by Scholastic Inc. in 2016.

Three women. Three generations. Three secrets.

A Stonewall Honor Book!Katie's life is falling apart: her best friend thinks she's a freak, her mother, Caroline, controls every aspect of her life, and her estranged grandmother, Mary, appears as if out of nowhere. Mary has dementia and needs lots of care, and when Katie starts putting together Mary's life story, secrets and lies are uncovered: Mary's illegitimate baby, her zest for life and freedom and men; the way she lived her life to the full yet suffered huge sacrifices along the way. As the relationship between Mary and Caroline is explored, Katie begins to understand her own mother's behavior, and from that insight, the terrors about her sexuality, her future, and her younger brother are all put into perspective.Funny, sad, honest, and wise, this powerful multigenerational novel from international bestseller Jenny Downham celebrates life like no book before.