The debut novel from Jenna Clake sees an unnamed 26-year-old woman living alone in a block of flats. She’s broken up with her relatively long-term boyfriend and over the course of the novel we learn that their relationship was a particularly abusive one. The woman is pretty friendless, and she spends her time observing other people who live in her block. One of these is a teenage girl who she sees outside with a friend one day. It looks as though the teens are casting some kind of spell. The woman befriends the pair and discovers that one of them is also in a toxic relationship. It’s an interesting set-up, but I’d suggest that any enjoyment you’ll get from the book will wholly depend on how interested you are in reading page after page of the trio carving up candles, burying stones, and casting spells they’ve downloaded off the internet. My interest in such stuff, alas, can charitably be described as minimal. RM

Published by Trapeze