Nora hasn’t always been Nora. She’s been Rebecca and Samantha, Hayley, Katie and Ashley. But that all stopped when she escaped.

Now 17, only her best friend Wes, and big sister (and protector) Lee, know about all the girls Nora has been. She hasn’t even told her Rockabilly girlfriend, Iris.

This all changes when Nora, Wes and Iris are standing in the queue at the local bank, and are abruptly swept up in an armed holdup. They are faced with two men armed with knives and guns, who aren’t scared to use them. Nora, her friends and several other bank customers are soon face down on the floor, hoping they won’t be shot next.

To begin with, Nora is mostly scared of Wes trying to do something heroic and getting himself killed. A few pointed glares stop him. Only just.

Nora begins to cobble together a plan with what she knows, and what she has – which is not much. Drawing on skills learnt from her childhood as daughter of a master con-artist, these plans change and morph minute by minute. Their stress levels rise along with the gunmen’s as the men realise a key part of their holdup has gone terribly wrong. While they try to prevent their plan from derailing, the men lock the hostages in offices. Adults in one. Kids and teens in another. Now Nora can really get to work.

A thriller like no other. Not only do we become a bank robbery hostage through the main character’s eyes, we discover that she has a raft of skills she can put to use against the armed gunmen threatening their lives.

Nora was raised by a con-woman (her own mother), and she knows how to read people, manipulate them or even injure them if required. While Nora is locked up, she flicks back through her childhood memories, looking for something to use against the gunmen.

There are memories she doesn’t want to revisit too. Things she did in the past, and what she left behind. She’s damaged and she knows it, but so are Iris and Wes in their own way. The truth pushes them apart, then pulls them back together even tighter than before. I loved quirky Rockabilly Iris and loyal Wes who knew Nora’s past.

Nora herself was badass, and her sister even more so – both still inwardly dealing with their pasts in their mother’s cons of shonky men. 

Brilliant! Soon to be a Netflix movie too.

Author – Tess Sharpe

Age – 15+

(Secrets, Thriller, Holdup, Weapons, Guns, Bank Robbery, Con Artist, Con woman, Devious, Manipulation, Manipulative, Fire, Arson, LGBTQ+, Safe Deposit Box, Memories, Truth, Friendship, Crime, Sisters)