This is Not Forgiveness

A year after his brother, Rob’s, death, Jamie contemplates Rob’s ashes, hoping that retelling last summer’s events might be cathartic. Wounded by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, Rob was desperate to get back there, a rage inside him untouchable by therapy, cannabis or booze.

Meanwhile, Jamie was falling for Caro; notoriously bad, expelled from school, shunned by other girls, desperate to do something politically meaningful. Unaware, innocent, Jamie had no idea the two people he loved were so deeply damaged, or that he was entangled between them. He’s still struggling to forgive them...

Painful and sad as Rob and Caro’s stories are, it’s Jamie’s unflinching honesty about his own naivety, about the depth of his deception that stands out in this hard-hitting, compelling novel.