Katherine Millar is eighteen and desperate to be less fat, less swotty and to have cooler friends. But most of all, she wishes she had two parents, instead of one grandma, Poll. Poll is pushing seventy, half blind and utterly poisonous. She has looked after Katherine since she was a baby, when her father was killed in a car crash and her mother vanished. Poll's ambition is for things to stay exactly the same for ever, and for Katherine never to leave their pit village of Bank Top. Katherine has other ideas, and she can feel change is coming; the omens are all around her. In the meantime, she cleans up after Poll, revises for her exams, watches daytime television and surfs the net at the library trying to find out how to be bulimic. What she doesn't quite realize yet is that life won't always wait for you to catch up with it.

This book covers similar themes to Kate Long's novel, The Bad Mother's Handbook, with teenage pregnancy, difficult family relationships and the absence of fathers. I was enthralled by the relationship between Kat and Poll. The blurb at the back of the book was not wrong when it described Poll as pure poison. She is so cleverly depicted as a woman full of malice and bitterness that you easily put aside your sympathy for her disability. The dry, bittersweet humour is very funny in parts, and yet also emotive when you realise just how desperately lonely these two people are despite the fact that they live together. I'm so glad the author didn't try to give us an all-round happy ending too.

I'm taking this to the bookcrossing meet in Wendover Woods on Saturday.

Won at the Wendover Woods live bookswap. I'll get round to reading it once I've read the dozens of ring books coming my way :-)

Sorry, never got round to reading this and I'm now downsizing for a future move.

Donated to Cats Protection to raise much needed funds.