LOOKING FOR JJ

Why would one child kill another? Are such children monsters? What happens to them when they get older? This disturbing British import explores these questions as it alternates between the past and present of a 17-year-old known as Alice Tully. Alice lives a quiet life near London, working at a coffee shop, staying with a social worker and dating a local student. She is actually Jennifer Jones, convicted six years earlier of killing a friend. The story slowly unfolds of her bleak childhood with a neglectful, ultimately abusive, single mother. In the present, Alice struggles to make a fresh start and to avoid newspaper reporters obsessed with Jennifer’s parole and secret identity. She longs hopelessly for a sense that her estranged mother loves her, despite a history of betrayals. Cassidy masterfully builds tension and jolts readers with plot twists. She evokes sympathy for a troubled child who becomes a teenager with a grim future and raises questions about who is responsible when a ten-year-old commits a violent crime. Compelling, thought-provoking crime fiction. (Fiction. YA)