Cuts Both Ways
The YA romance from the Sunday Times Bestseller
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- 4,49 €
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- 4,49 €
Publisher Description
'Funny and heart-warming ... Brathwaite tackles big themes with a deft touch' Stylist
'A sharp look at the realities of growing up Black in Britain ... warm and insightful' Observer
'You don't want to put it down until you've read it cover to cover' Independent
'Tackles big issues with humour and heart' i newspaper
Love is never just black and white...
A sharp and authentic love story about 16-year-old Cynthia, who finds herself caught between two brothers: one who is Black and the other who is white. Tackling the complexities of growing up Black and British, Cuts Both Ways is the first fiction title from the Sunday Times best-selling Candice Brathwaite, author of I Am Not Your Baby Mother.
London is everything to Cynthia, so when her parents move her to a place where there is only one bus an hour and the faint smell of horse manure continuously permeates the air, it's a culture shock, to say the least. As is transitioning to a private school.
At her new school, Cynthia immediately finds herself caught between two brothers - head boy Thomas, who is white, and his adopted Black brother, Isaac. There is something about Isaac she cannot quite get enough of ... but her father wants her to partner up with someone like Thomas, someone who will be 'better for her future prospects'.
When it turns out the brothers have been keeping secrets from her, secrets that link back to the life Cynthia thought she had left behind in London, she realises that not everything is as it seems.
How can Cynthia follow her heart when it's being torn in two?
An exploration of race, class, love and the complexities of growing up as a Black British teen, from bestselling author Candice Brathwaite.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The success of Candice Brathwaite’s best-selling non-fiction reads dealing with motherhood and other life lessons lies in her ability to speak directly to Black women in the UK with frank understanding of their shared experiences. Cuts Both Ways is her first novel, a young adult coming of age, founded in tragedy. Within the pages of this story about a Black teenager struggling to make sense of the world after her brother is murdered, Brathwaite employs the same unshrinking honesty about the devastating effects of knife crime. When Cynthia’s parents move from the diverse hustle and bustle of south London and into the countryside, she finds herself enrolled at an elite private school where she is one of only two other Black students. She falls under the attention of two brothers, the apex point of a love triangle that eventually reveals itself to be far more complex than just adolescent hormones and petty jealousy. Cynthia balances the flushes of first love with the pressures of exacting parents, the explicit and implicit racism she is confronted with in her new environment, and the grief that ripples not just through her own, now fractured, family but across entire communities in the wake of a devastating crime. The issues explored in Cuts Both Ways are handled compassionately and the characters are fully realised, making it easy to relate to and empathise with the pain they carry. Brathwaite’s heroine, Cynthia is fearless but fragile, illustrating that underneath the teenage bravado, these are children dealing with situations that even grown adults find difficult to navigate with care. Avoiding judgement and moralising, Brathwaite illustrates the zero-sum game of knife crime through the eyes and voices of those left to pick up the pieces shattered by its impact. Cuts Both Ways is a sensitively written portrayal of Black girlhood and family, laced with humour, mystery and romance.