Arriving at the University of Edinburgh for her first term, Pen knows her divorced parents back in Canada are hiding something from her. She believes she'll find the answer here in Scotland, where an old friend of her father's—now a famous writer known as Lord Lennox—lives. When she is invited to spend the weekend at Lord Lennox's centuries-old estate with his enveloping, fascinating family, Pen begins to unravel her parents' secret, just as she's falling in love for the first time... As Pen experiences the sharp shock of adulthood, she comes to rely on herself for the first time in her life.
Winsome ... A delicious premise ... Knight writes with humor and generosity as we follow Pen’s frequently painful metamorphosis into womanhood. Her kind, comic eye sneaks into the novel in subtle, endearing ways ... Knight has crafted a tantalizing yet quietly touching debut about inheritance, emerging sexuality and what it truly means to come into one’s own.
This is a lively, funny book that reads easily, but there is also a satisfying heaviness of focus on ideas like love, partnership, attachments and choice ... It is to Knight’s credit as a writer that all of these so-pivotal points cohere with each other as harmonically as they do.
Another coming-of-age novel about commencing young adulthood could seem pedestrian, but Knight’s gorgeously intimate, cleverly insightful wordsmithing will certainly impress and entertain.
