Jacqueline Crooks exploded onto the scene in 2023 with Fire Rush, which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Jhalak Prize. It won the PEN America Open Book Award and the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, and was an Observer best debut novel. Her short stories have been nominated for multiple prizes, including the BBC National Short Story Award. Now, in her riveting second novel, Crooks’ rhythmic, lyrical prose transports us to a North London housing estate in the 1990s, where threelives intersect to haunting effect. Jaycee has clawed her way out of a women’s hostel and into a flat high in Sky City estate, but the view cannot blot out her memories. Then Sol walks back into her life – the boy who once protected her, seeming to offer a lifeline. Her closest friend, Ella-G, has left London for the New York music scene, and when Jaycee stumbles on a record that seems to lead to Ella-G’s father, the two women head to Atlantic City for answers, forcing Jaycee to reckon with her own past. A richly textured story of trauma, friendship, loneliness and redemption, and an evocative portrait of ’90s London.