HOW TO MAKE A FRIEND

This Book s a love story – and a psychological thriller – with a twist...: Loneliness is a sickness that grabs at the ribs and holds on tight. It doesn’t show on one's face, but everyone knows it’s there, and nobody wants to catch it.

Growing up with a family who neglected her, Alice had a very lonely childhood. She didn’t meet her one real friend Rory until she was a teenager, and the two became inseparable – Alice all but adopted by Rory’s own family, his loving mother, and gorgeous, unattainable older brother Jonathan. But then a terrible accident leaves Alice in a coma for three months, and she wakes to discover that Rory has not survived. Alice is overcome with grief, so when she recognises the only other friend of her life at her hospital bedside, she greets him with relief. But Sam is not real – he is a childhood fancy which she has long grown out of… As soon as her life gets back on track, Sam will disappear again, won’t he?

But Sam seems to be growing stronger and alarmingly possessive. Alice is worried that the accident has left more damage on her emotional health than the doctors have been able to recognise. With sorrow bringing them together again, Jonathan is there for her, and finally starting to see Alice as more than the best friend of his kid brother, but Sam is determined that Alice should be his alone. Is Alice sabotaging herself with this figment of her imagination, or is there something more sinister at play?

Fleur Smithwick lives in London with her family and writes novels and short stories. This is her first novel and she is at work on her second. She has won short story competitions for Segora and The Writers’ Village, has been short-listed twice for the Fish Publishing Short Story Competition and The New Writer.