Seventeen year-old Rose and her naive younger brother, Rudder, live with their mum in a cramped one bedroom flat above a kebab shop that never seems to close. Life may be hard for them in their damp-ridden home but it is a welcome change to the rules and laws followed under the Pilgrims, a religious sect that threatens their family’s very existence.
Escaping the strict regimes and daily rituals, Rose is no longer bound by the beliefs she was brought up on. Now she much prefers spending time with her boyfriend Kye, defying the life she once led to the extreme. It’s not long before his expectations of her and her willingness to do anything to make him happy come with its own repercussions.
Whispered family secrets threaten to spill, the old ways conflicting with her new way of life. Incidents she has tried to forget but the continual nightmares that consume her brother, make her question her decision to walk away from her past.
Torn between her new life that’s filled with make-up, music and mayhem to the old ways of prayer and atonement, Rose finds herself in a challenging moral predicament affecting everyone around her.
She has no choice but to return to the fold even if it means losing her family and her freedom.
A tangled story of friendship, deceit and sibling loyalty, Rose, Interrupted, will consume your every thought until you finish the last page. With meticulous attention to detail, this sobering take on the religious aspects of life within a sect amid the darker side of the social media-savvy world we now live in, is a must-read for all.
Patrice Lawrence’s prose gives us a refreshing insight into how our beliefs, and sometimes our willingness to escape them, can bring resentment and danger into the lives of those we cherish the most.
Patrice’s fourth YA novel ‘Rose, Interrupted‘ is yet another page-turner and I can’t wait to see where she will take us next.
Also by Patrice Lawrence – Orange Boy
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