Age: 13+

Joe, a nice middle-class doctor’s son in Year 10, falls in love on sight with a girl he sees outside London’s King’s Cross station. He becomes obsessed by her, and the fact that she is a prostitute with a heroin habit and a nasty pimp does not deter him from taking her to the zoo. Somewhere beneath all the damage, Candy is a nice middle-class girl, too, but can she be rescued? This love story develops into a suspenseful thriller as Joe takes mad risks — supported by his saintly elder sister and her hero of a boyfriend — and his life and Candy’s intertwine in a way that changes them both. The preoccupations of Joe’s ordinary, boy-in-a-band existence become insignificant as he makes life-or-death choices and everything he holds dear is threatened. From the ugliness and violence of drug culture (depicted unflinchingly, but not sensationally), Brooks makes an uplifting story of goodness, courage, the will to live and the details that make life precious. This is a fine and tender portrait of (unconsummated) teenage passion, and a nail-biting adventure. It would be a great shame if teenage boys, in whose voice the story is told, were deterred by the girl’s name in the title.

(The Chicken House £12.99)

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