King Lear meets Mean Girls in this raw, moving novel in verse about identity, friendship and learning to love yourself from multi-award-winning author Manjeet Man.
King Lear meets Mean Girls in this raw, moving novel in verse about identity, friendship and learning to love yourself from multi-award-winning author Manjeet Man.
Cordelia has spent her whole life trying to be enough. Enough for her mother. Enough for everyone else.
When the weight of impossible expectations finally becomes too much, she leaves home for drama school in the city. Here, the future feels wide open. Here, she can reinvent herself and finally belong.
But freedom has its own dangers. Swept up in a crowd chasing nights they'll never remember, and new friendships that pull her further away from herself, Cordelia discovers that some things can't be left behind. Not the loneliness. Not the doubt. Not the voice that tells her she'll never measure up.
As old wounds resurface and the masks begin to slip, Cordelia must stop performing for everyone else and face the hardest audience of all: herself.
Manjeet Mann is a multi-award-winning author, playwright, screenwriter, and actress. Her debut YA novel, Run Rebel, was shortlisted for the 2021 Carnegie Medal and won the CILIP Carnegie Shadowers’ Choice Award, the UKLA Award, the Diverse Book Award, and the Sheffield Children’s Book Award, as well as being named a Guardian Best Book of 2020. Her second novel, The Crossing, won the 2022 Costa Children’s Book Award, the UKLA Award, and was Overall Winner at the Sheffield Children’s Book Awards. It was also shortlisted for numerous other prizes, including the 2022 Carnegie Medal, Waterstones Children's Book Prize and YA Book Award. Manjeet writes picture books too, including Small’s Big Dream, which won the Readers’ Choice Award at the Diverse Book Awards. She adapted Run Rebel for the stage with Pilot Theatre, earning Best Production at the 2025 Off West End Stage Awards. Manjeet lives in Scotland.
