Rose by any other name

This is Maureen McCarthy's first novel after a fair hiatus, and it's a good try, but doesn't quite get there, I don't think. She's written some good YA stories, with protagonists a little more gritty and less citified than say Melina Marchetta's versions, and with the action set outside the ordinary school life.

This story covers a short road trip Rose makes with her mother to see her dying grandmother. On the way Rose finds herself thinking about all the things that have happened in the last year - her father leaving, her affair with her best friend's father, and the dissolution of this friendship, the most important in her life. And she's only eighteen.

Doesn't quite work. The horrible seduction is done well, actually, with Rose's complete lack of awareness of how wrong it is for this man to have done that to her. The thing with the new boy and the best friend doesn't quite seem to be real, and the family collapse at the same time as her sister gets a part in a leading soap . . . it just seems all too much.

It's written in the first person, which does give the reader some insight into how little Rose seems to understand of her situation. She writes well, but there's nothing brilliant or exciting about it all. You don't love any of these people. It's readable, quite good, but it could've been a lot better.