The Middler

In the town of Fennis Wick, there are two rules: eldests go to military camp when they turn 14, and you don’t talk to wanderers: they’re dirty, dangerous and deceitful, or so Maggie’s been told.

Maggie is a middler – a middle child – and she’s sick of it. Eldest children get all the good stuff: the parties, the prizes and the praise, while middlers grow up in the eldests’ shadows. Maggie desperately wants a taste of being an eldest. So when she meets a wanderer, she reckons that if she can catch them that will make her a hero and people will finally listen to her. But Fennis Wick is hiding a terrible secret and everything Maggie thought she understood about the world is about to come crashing down.

Maggie’s just a middler, though, so who’s going to listen when she tries to tell the truth?

This is a wonderfully conceived and slickly executed dystopian novel set in a seemingly idyllic town, but with an undercurrent of secrets to send a shiver down the spine. Maggie is a boiling pot of adolescent emotions, whose jealousy of the eldests leads her to make some challenging choices which have far-reaching consequences.