“Tell me a story, Daddy?”
When Jack was young, his dad would read him a bedtime story every night. Not from a book but made up. Worlds filled with adventure and intrigue that a six year-old could take in and dream of far away lands with gruesome monsters to slay. Fast forward eight years and those stories are now published to much acclaim. Now that Jack is famous as ‘the boy behind the tales’ his life will never be the same again.
“Wouldn’t you like a time machine to travel back to when things were simpler?”
Jack would give anything to go back to when he was six years-old, when his mum was around and when they were just bedtime stories. Sent to a boarding school to escape the limelight, the pupils at St Benedicts School for Boys were certainly not saint-like in nature and the unwanted attention affected his mental health and well-being. Nothing good would ever come of speaking about that place or those in it. Jack wakes up in an emotional health facility to help him ‘get better’ but he just wants out. No more pills that make him drowsy and forget things, no more paparazzi following his every move, no more famous books…
Written in journal entry style, Alan McClure’s YA novel ‘Jack’s Well’ charts the life of a teenager caught up in the world of fame where reality mixes with imagination. With chapters that move between the timespan of before and after he became famous as the poster boy for his dad’s creations, as well as actual chapters from the fictional hit ‘Jack’s Well’ series,
this novel will push the reader to consider their very own existence and the choices they make.
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