In this "breathtaking" debut novel, an English girl comes of age as she pines for a better life: "note-perfect from beginning to end" (San Francisco Chronicle). Galaxy Craze's national bestselling debut novel "captures perfectly the hopes and hurts of childhood." The twelve-year-old protagonist, May, lives in a struggling oceanfront bed-and-breakfast run by her loving yet distracted single mother, Lucy, who strives to care for her children without forfeiting her own desires for fun and passion (The New York Times). May pins her hopes on the things that elude her—an absent father, the London city life left behind, the acceptance of the popular girls, and matronly mothers who provide more than tea and toast at mealtimes. She wonders if her life will ever change. When a kindly writer and his stylish editor come to lodge in the weeks before Christmas, May can feel the opportunity in the air. But then her estranged playboy father drops in, threatening to upend the delicate new possibilities stirring in all their lives.