Connie is still grieving her mum when her dad gets a new girlfriend. Wendy isn’t used to moody teenagers, and especially not one who reminds her constantly that she will never live up to their mum. Connie’s big sister May is better at concealing her true feelings about Wendy’s invasion, but Connie discovers this too late.

Early one morning, Connie is kidnapped from her room by two strangers. Her screams for her father go unanswered and when she learns why, she is even more terrified. Her father was the one who organised the kidnapping. Connie has no doubt that Wendy had a lot to do with it, but she is still reeling when she is taken to a remote facility with a sign saying, Silver Lake Academy.

It’s not a school. It’s not a hospital. It’s a behaviour management facility for troubled teens. Connie can’t figure out what she did to make her father do something so incredibly terrible to his own daughter. Their mum had raised her girls to speak out, not go with the flow or follow every rule. But as soon as she was gone, this mantra vanished with her. Wendy had a very different way of doing things.

After the initial shock at arriving at the academy, Connie notices that the other teens were taking special interest in her. Trying to fit in to the new rules of her life, and understand the strange behavior training they are subjected to, she learns that she has taken another girl’s place. The girl was named Belle, and she looks much like her.

The longer she stays, the more Connie learns about Belle, her strange disappearance, and the unstable director running the academy. When another teen goes missing, Connie’s upbringing begins to rise – breaking rules, demanding to know where the girls have gone and pushing her boundaries.

The more she gets to know the others locked up with her, the more she learns about them, the facility and finally the horrible truth….

This YA thriller in verse, hits the reader with the action on the very first page!

Exploring the industry of teen behaviour management therapy camps in America, Gone For Good takes the reader through the horrors of this practise – paid for by parents with troubled teens.

From kidnapping in the middle of the night out of their own beds, to the ‘therapies’ inflicted on them, these camps are often money making enterprises like Silver Lake Academy, with unproven practices that do more harm than heal. This fictional facility is hiding secrets, which are gradually revealed to the reader via different viewpoints from past and present.

Learning what main character Connie did to find herself a resident of Silver Lake Academy is also woven into the narrative.

This form of story telling is succinct, clear and clever, from winner of the Carnegie Medal, Irish Book of the Year, and the YA Jury Award for her previous novels.

Author – Sarah Crossan

Age – 13+

Publisher – Simon & Schuster UK

Set in – USA / Fictional Silver Lake Academy far from anywhere

Viewpoint –

Orphan? – No

Violence – Yes

Real Life – Yes

Fantasy – No

Sex – No

Blend – Real Life / YA Suspense/Thriller

(2026, Crime, Mystery, Family, Real Life, Verse Novel, Punishments, Camp, Control, Missing Teens, Remote Behaviour management facility, Lies, Clues, Concealment, Troubled Teen Industry)