Ella Black seems to live the life most other seventeen-year-olds would kill for . . .
Until one day, telling her nothing, her parents whisk her off to Rio de Janeiro. Determined to find out why, Ella takes her chance and searches through their things.
And realises her life has been a lie.
Her mother and father aren't hers at all. Unable to comprehend the truth, Ella runs away, to the one place they'll never think to look - the favelas.
But there she learns a terrible secret - the truth about her real parents and their past. And the truth about a mother, desperate for a daughter taken from her seventeen years ago.
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[I am huddled on a beach, shivering, but I don't care about being a bit cold because I'm busy]***
(@PenguinUKBooks, 12 October 2017, 349 pages, ebook, A Year Of @EpicReads 2019, a book with lying characters, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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There is a moment, a few chapters into the book when I thought I was stuck reading a stinker. I don't mind suspending belief as long as the author makes it worthwhile. Unfortunately, for a few chapters it seemed like the author was not going to make it worthwhile and I was set for disappointment. Ella has always felt like she has a dark side of her personality that she's named Bella Black. Bella is prone to violence and whispers nasty thinks in Ella's head. Ella finds out she's adopted and her birth parents are murderers so she decides this means she's a demon and Bella Black is her true self trying to break out. This whole thing seemed to be ridiculous. However, things calm down and Ella starts to come to terms with her past so the book manages to redeem itself. I enjoyed the way Ella develops and the turns her life takes after she runs away.
