The Sun Road — Hannah Macdonald

When, after eighteen years, thirty-year-old Beth meets her childhood friend and neighbour, Dan, she is horrified to feel a strong physical attraction between them. Is it simply because they offer each other a sentimental link to the past or is there more to it than that? Whatever the answer, Beth can't allow it to develop. As one friend says to her, 'It's not ironic, it's sick. You are not going out with the son of a man you had a two-year affair with.' But prickly, self-contained Beth knows it's too late and so begins an affair that will bring Beth and Dan face to face with their pasts, with the choices their parents made and with the precarious nature of happiness. A journey that will ultimately lead to Beth discovering the shocking truth behind her unhappy relationship with her mother and a thirty-year-old tragedy that has shaped all their lives. Characterisation that never misses a beat makes this an astonishingly assured debut novel.