This book is difficult to describe, it's just so good. C. J. Skuse is best known through her "Sweetpea" series, which I am going to tackle next, having only read the first book so far. This one is different in that there is no serial killer anywhere, and yet it's completely addictive.

Ellis was ten years old when her world crumbled. She used to do everything with her cousin Foy, they shared a treehouse and endless creativity, building worlds full of queens and unicorns. Then her Dad testified against a drugs cartel and they both had to go into a witness protection programme, meaning she lost her beloved aunt, uncle and cousins from her life. 

When she was 18, the drugs cartel found them and exacted revenge, leaving her Dad dead and her severely injured. From then on she became paranoid, asking to be moved every two years and starting to make up different lives for herself, with names taken from old gravestones from her childhood. To one person she would be Charlotte the successful author, to another Mary the doctor with five children etc., her creative worldbuilding skills still intact though used in an unhealthy way.

She works as a cleaner for a fancy hotel where her colleagues bully her for being weird and pretending a life-like doll is her child. She thinks someone is following her, sending her coffin catalogues and breathing silently down her phone. Her alcoholic handler from witness protection doesn't believe her as all the cartel members are either dead or incarcerated so she is deemed low risk. But then a female hotel guest who looked just like her before her latest hair colour change gets murdered and she takes a self defence class with gym instructor Kaden, an object of her admiration and father of all five of her fictitious children.

Ellis is clearly broken by childhood trauma and is getting increasingly unhinged but no one helps her and after she's cried wolf so many times before, no one believes her any more.

Then, around the halfway mark, the perspective suddenly changes to that of an adult Foy who now lives in France with her siblings and has for the past months tried to find Ellis with the help of a private investigator. It looks like not a moment too soon as things spiral out of control for Ellis on every front.

There are quite a few twists and turns although some things seem clear from the outset. Ellis' mental illness and unfavourable reactions of others are described well. I never thought that Ellis was lying out of spite - my reaction was always "that poor, poor girl, what have they done to her". She is so young for her age, having never really moved on from her idyllic childhood before the age of ten.

There are like a million trigger warnings for this book and yet I gobbled it up until late at night. It's gripping and it's heartbreaking, and the ambiguous ending just floored me. Highly recommended as a gateway drug for Skuse's adult writing.