from amazon.com:
Sam Marsdyke is a lonely young man, dogged by an incident in his past and forced to work his family farm instead of attending school in his Yorkshire village. He methodically fills his life with daily routines and adheres to strict boundaries that keep him at a remove from the townspeople. But one day he spies Josephine, his new neighbor from London. From that moment on, Sam's carefully constructed protections begin to crumble—and what starts off as a harmless friendship between an isolated loner and a defiant teenage girl takes a most disturbing turn.
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I don't remember where I got this book but it's an autographed copy.

This book had the largest amount of British slang I have ever encountered which I found rather fascinating, sometimes puzzling and ultimately made for slow-going reading-wise in some respects. Most of the time I can figure it out from the context but I did occasionally have to look-up a definition. This aspect got a little better as I made my way through the book and got use to the pattern of speech and words.

I thought it was an interesting story and it held my attention. The main character Sam's thoughts are "spoken" to us along with what's happening since he's telling the events. I like a first-person narrative but there were a couple times where I wasn't sure at first if he was dreaming or telling it as it occurred because often his thoughts were as he wished things to be or imagined how they could be. I liked the realism of the plot though and thought the ending was well done.

Left on a bench near the entrance - hope you enjoy this book!