The Blamed

The compelling, thought-provoking new novel from bestselling author Emily Hourican.

It was the best summer of Anna's life. The summer she fell in love. The summer she found out who she was, and felt for the first time the great, magnetic pull of life, and knew she could have all of it.

But she was wrong -- and has been keeping a painful secret ever since.

Now, fifteen years later, Anna is struggling to get through to her troubled daughter -- named Jessie in memory of Anna's best friend. While once they were close, now Jessie keeps her mother at a distance, her every word and action a mystery. Though, sometimes, Anna wonders if Jessie can see right through her.

And when her daughter starts to ask questions about the past, and her namesake, Anna realises that the truth is threatening to escape and tip the delicate balance of their lives forever.

Emily Hourican is a journalist and author. She has written features for the Sunday Independent for fifteen years, as well as Image magazine, Conde Nast Traveler and Woman and Home. She was also editor of The Dubliner Magazine.

Emily's first book, a memoir titled How To (Really) Be A Mother was published in 2013. She is also the author of novels The Privileged, White Villa, The Outsider and The Blamed.

She lives in Dublin with her family.