Versions of a Girl
On sale
22nd May 2025
Price: £9.99
Genre
‘No other writer has ever made me laugh and cry as much as Catherine Gray’
Daisy May Cooper
‘Tender, lush and electric; a wild, heartbreaking, exhilarating ride’
Daisy Buchanan
‘Exquisite, stunning, executed brilliantly’
Poorna Bell
____
Do we become who we are because of our parents, or in spite of them?
Fern’s mother is a social climber and a former ballet dancer who lives a plush life in a London townhouse.
Fern’s father only climbs if there’s a bottle at the top, has an IQ of 133 and lives hand-to-mouth in Californian motels.
Aged fourteen, Fern has spent equal time with each of her parents. That is, until an unexpected visitor triggers a life-changing dilemma: whether she should get on a plane to London to be with her mother, or stay in California with her father. Here, Fern’s narrative splices in two.
Two possible lives, one person. Each Fern will grow in wildly different, but eerily similar directions. Both must determine who they want to be – and how they deal with a thorny problem which threatens to undo them all: a murder.
Warm and brilliantly wise, this is the irresistible fiction debut from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober.
Daisy May Cooper
‘Tender, lush and electric; a wild, heartbreaking, exhilarating ride’
Daisy Buchanan
‘Exquisite, stunning, executed brilliantly’
Poorna Bell
____
Do we become who we are because of our parents, or in spite of them?
Fern’s mother is a social climber and a former ballet dancer who lives a plush life in a London townhouse.
Fern’s father only climbs if there’s a bottle at the top, has an IQ of 133 and lives hand-to-mouth in Californian motels.
Aged fourteen, Fern has spent equal time with each of her parents. That is, until an unexpected visitor triggers a life-changing dilemma: whether she should get on a plane to London to be with her mother, or stay in California with her father. Here, Fern’s narrative splices in two.
Two possible lives, one person. Each Fern will grow in wildly different, but eerily similar directions. Both must determine who they want to be – and how they deal with a thorny problem which threatens to undo them all: a murder.
Warm and brilliantly wise, this is the irresistible fiction debut from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober.
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Reviews
Versions of a Girl transfixed me from the first brilliant sentence and held me in its grip until its poignant, perfect end. I loved this novel more than I've loved any novel in ages
A raw and relatable page-turner
A clever, compulsive read that asks big questions about the nature/nurture debate