Changes

After an acrimonious divorce, Vincent chooses to stay with his father and not his mother and sister. As his father works away much of the time, they go to live with Vincent's grandparents, who run an undertaking business. Vincent, a reserved and sensitive child, is being bullied on his way in to his new school by Frankie Lennox from the grammar school, who goes so far as to threaten Vincent with a knife. Uncle Billy sorts this out very quickly, but Vincent's sense of relief quickly disappears when he wins a scholarship to the grammar school himself. With a father in pieces over the divorce, the looming shadow of a bully, and the malign influence of Graeme, an employee of his grandfather's, Vincent is embarking on the most dangerous, but most formative, year of his life...

But for teens and young adults, this is an absolutely marvellous book. It's utterly compelling, told in a dual narrative, with one thread in flashback, tracing the breakup of Vincent's parents marriage, and the other following the boy through his new life living with his grandparents in the wake of two critical events - the divorce and the bullying by Frankie Lennox.