Sarah
Moore Fitzgerald is a brave new voice in children's literature, she has written
academic books before but this is her first book for children and it is
assured, strongly written and totally engaging. The protagonist is Cosmo a
young boy coming to terms with the accidental death of his brother a few years
earlier and his mother's desertion of him to take a job on the other side of
the world. Cosmo lives with his grandparents whom he adores but right from page
one we know that something is wrong as his grandfather begins to act strangely
and forget things. Cosmo tries to
help by googling memory loss and using different techniques to help his
grandfather remember. However everything comes to a head when social workers
and doctors become involved and Cosmo is told that he will have to stay with
his uncle Ted for a while. In a moment of clarity his granddad gives him a rusty
old key and tells him to go to Blackbrick Abbey.
Sneaking away in the middle of the night Cosmo manages to open the gate and on
the other side he meets his grandfather as a teenager. Cosmo realises that
perhaps his grandfather has given him a chance to change the past and save
everything from going wrong. A heartfelt and emotional story which deals with
issues deeply personal to the author who lost her father to Alzheimer’s, this
is a great read for teens and adults, highly recommended. Thanks so much to
Joanna at Hachette Ireland for sending this out to me to review.
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