People can’t bring themselves to say what happened to her. They just describe her as ‘the girl who… you know…’. But nobody really knows, no one sees the real Leah.

Leah is the perfect survivor. She was seven years old when she saw her mother and sister killed by a troubled gang member. Her case hit the headlines and her bravery made her a national sweetheart: strong, courageous and forgiving.

But Leah is hiding a secret about their deaths. And now, ten years later, all she can think of is revenge.

When Leah’s dad meets a new partner, stepsister Ellie moves in. Sensing Leah isn’t quite the sweet girl she pretends to be, Ellie discovers that Leah has a plan, one she has been putting together ever since that fateful day. Now that the killer – and the only one who knows the truth – is being released from prison, time is running out for Ellie to discover how far Leah will go to silence her anger . . .

The Girl Who was shortlisted for the Crimefest Best Crime Novel for Young Adults and longlisted for the Branford Boase Award, 2022.

Behind the scenes…

The idea for this book came to me years before I started writing it. I was working at a young women’s magazine and we were talking about a girl who had witnessed a murder as a child and received a lot of press attention in the aftermath. She had been brave, she had been courageous, she had been inspiring but underneath it all there had been a frightened victim in the glare of publicity. How could she even begin growing up surrounded by all that, on top of the trauma she had already endured. My character Leah is very different from that girl, especially as Leah is obsessed with revenge, but writing The Girl Who… made me think a lot about my work as a journalist and what we should and shouldn’t write.

“Whether you’re a teen or not it’s brilliant.”

Catherine Cooper, author of The chalet