The Blamed

‘Insightful and astute writing … Emily Hourican has a wonderful understanding of human nature’ Louise O’Neill

The summer she turned twenty-five, Anna felt invincible.

In love for the first time, in a strange city far from home, she could be a new person. All that she had ever wanted was there for the taking. But the glorious possibility of those long sultry days ended in a reality far starker than she could have imagined.

Now, fifteen years later, Anna is struggling to get through to her teenage daughter Jessie — named in memory of Anna’s best friend — who has developed an eating disorder. Mother and daughter were once close, but now Anna feels as if Jessie’s every word and action is a mystery. Though sometimes she wonders if Jessie can see right through her.

And when her daughter starts to report dreams about the namesake she never met, Anna — increasingly unnerved by just how much her daughter seems to know — is forced to face the secrets of that summer when her life changed in one unravelling moment, and the brutal truth about the part she had to play.