Sorry Isn't Good Enough

Jane Bailey was born and brought up in Gloucestershire, where she now lives. She has written seven novels, including Lark Song, What Was Rescued and Tommy Glover's Sketch of Heaven, and has been shortlisted for the Dillons Fiction prize and the RNA award. She has edited four anthologies of work by young people as Writer-in-Residence for Cheltenham Festivals, First Story and Gloucestershire Hospitals Education Service.

Told from the perspective of a nine year old embroiled in tragedy that shapes her whole life, childhood memories carried with her that resonate on so many levels, it evokes the past in glorious technicolour. I absolutely loved it and cannot do justice to the goldenness it contains, bitter-sweet and touching.
Wonderful. Literally (literally!) couldn't put it down, to me it reads like Joanna Cannon/Maggie O'Farrell with a slice of Stand by Me era Stephen King.
Sorry Isn't Good Enough was gripping and surprising, and at turns chilling and heartbreaking. Stephanie's story will stay with me for a long time.
What a wonderful book; it swept me back to the sixties and my own childhood. Touching and gripping - a story that will stay with me.
The heart of this emotionally-literate coming-of-age story is Stephanie who, with her eccentric take on the world, yearning for love and unexpected bursts of wit, is as believable as she is sympathetic. What seems like a gentle story on first glance soon reveals itself to be much more: full of life's sorrow, joy and misunderstanding. I always love Jane Bailey's books and this is her best yet.
Richly-textured, compelling, emotionally complex. Squeezes your heart until the very last page.