Crushed

Deliciously dark... The perfect crossover between literary fiction and crime. Thoughtful and nuanced, it explores the dark shadows of adolescence, and the everlasting pull of female friendship.

Mesmerising, compulsive, deliciously dark — and so good on the complex and thorny bond between friends. Kate Hamer’s writing is incandescent.

I loved this book. A dark and haunting tale, beautifully drawn. Kate Hamer has a gift for story-telling and I think this may be her best yet.

As Hamer’s eerie, atmospheric novel unfolds, she skillfully recasts Shakespeare’s witches as her three teenage leads in a novel that is as much about family dysfunction, burgeoning sexuality and abuse of power as it is about teenage mysticism...Hamer writes beautifully about the complex and shifting dynamics between adolescent female friends. As Phoebe, believing herself to be as powerful as one of the witches in Macbeth, entices her friends into ever more perilous territory, Hamer brings the novel to a startling and powerful conclusion. Crushed is a richly imagined novel about the fine line between teenage friendship, passion and obsession.

The darkness in the lives of teenage girls has been at the heart of much fine recent American crime fiction... Crushed is a terrific Brisith counterpart, the compelling story of three girls growing up in Bath in the Noughties. Phoebe, Orla and Grace are in the grip of passions they barely understand and have no idea what disasters they are capable of unleashing. Beautifully written and thoroughly unsettling.

It’s impossible not to be impressed with Kate Hamer’s expert control of language. There are whole passages of interior monologue that are worthy of being called prose poems.