WORDS FAIL ME

"Fascinating, complex, timely and filled with compassion." —Ian Rankin

​"A dark and startling tale of righteous vengeance." —Val McDermid

When Jane - smart, funny, fortyish - says she's a school counsellor, people assume it's all about exam stress, if only. Her teenage clients include Vaishali, who hates the perfect curves that draw the attention of adult men; Fraser, who cares devotedly for his mother but hurts his girlfriend by confusing real life with porn; and George, a trans boy who suffers from acute anxiety. Harboring terrible secrets from her own youth, Jane struggles to contain the anger these stories arouse in her. It's only when she starts counselling her colleague Kass, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse whose trauma is resurfacing, that her thoughts turn to revenge . . .

Moving, entertaining and revelatory, Words Fail Me not only shines a light on adolescent agonies, it's also a gripping page-turner with a compelling mystery at its core - and a hair-raising climax.

Frances McKendrick is a psychotherapist and writer living in Edinburgh with her husband and two children. She won the Isobel Lodge Award for her short fiction, which has also been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize. Words Fail Me is her first novel.