Shift by Em Bailey
Electric Monkey £6.99/ebook £5.59, Age 12+, ST Bookshop price £6.64
Shift is a novel that does precisely that: when we think we know what is going on, everything changes. Olive, the free-spirited narrator, tells us about her best friend Ami, about her former friend and now enemy Katie, and about the arrival at school of a nondescript new girl, Miranda. Gossip says that Miranda killed her parents, and Olive swallows an internet-inspired suggestion that she might be an alien “shapeshifter”. But things are more complicated than this sci-fi notion. Some, if not all, of the dangers in this ingeniously told story are real: anorexia, alcohol, psychological damage. As the sand moves beneath our feet, we are swept irresistibly to the end by a tense mystery and a charming romance.