This teenage fiction is highly readable, crossing over nicely into a quick adult read. Dual narrative is easily distinguished by font changes and is handled nicely – if you’ve read any dual narrative written by Robert Swindells, it is of that standard. Catriona (Cat) McPherson is a fourteen year-old athlete. In fact she’s an athlete with serious potential - into swimming and running and more recently, fencing.

Someone is watching Cat but she doesn’t know who or how and it actually takes her a while to notice. It was this aspect that gave the novel an authentic teenage feel, I felt Cat was written like the girl she was meant to be. She’s sulky and stroppy when her excessive training begins to get in the way of her life and she ignores her parents’ requests to not have an account on Phiz. Phiz seems to be an amalgamation of Facebook and Twitter but without any controls or administrators.

This novel is firmly pitched as teen crime fiction and it is actually quite engaging as an adult read. You’re never quite sure who the watcher is or why indeed Cat is being watched, although a perceptive reader will know towards the ending who it is before it is revealed. It feels quite a ‘real’ novel, you’re never thinking that something wouldn’t happen, which is nice; it’s firmly grounded in reality. Similarly, the characters seem as real as they can be with a mixture of class structure in the novel.

There are one or two moments where you wish it would just move on to the next step in the story but I don’t feel a teen reader would be thinking the same. I’d happily recommend this book to any readers enjoying a good crime story and I’d also look out this author for other material. ( )