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No it is absolutely fantastic. I just reread it and cried.

Decided it was too sad for dd(10) though but will give it to her in a few years.

Oh yes I remember it being so sad and I used to cry every time. I had a massive crush on Anton! Did you ever read the follow up book Beatrice?

Oh goodness hadn't heard of this in years! Takes me back to my youth, now I want to read it again.

I didn't know there was a followup book!

Bronte the sequel is listed as 'Morning is a long time coming'. Is it possible that 'Beatrice' is an alternative title? Had no idea that there was a follow up. I love the original. Patty was treated so poorly by her family.

I'm an idiot! Beatrice was a previous poster! Sorry!

Passport
Yes that's the title. I don't think I knew there was one when I read the original. My copy is arriving tomorrow- I can't wait to read it again.

It's Friday, it's after five, my brain has switched off for the weekend....!

Patty was so scapegoated by her family. She reached out to a surrogate family as best she could: Anton, the family housekeeper, the reporter...

Yes I think I remember that her dad was a particularly unpleasant character- is that right? (Been 25 years at least since I read it!!)

I quite liked an adult book called ' The Collaborator' by Margaret Leroy about a woman who falls in love with a German Captain on Guernsey during WWII. It is beautifully written.

Yes, the father was very difficult and the mother preferred her younger sister. Very sad.

I loved that story and had a huge crush on Anton. I had an elaborate fantasy in which I met him in similar circumstances and we fell in love and I got pregnant but he was shot before I could tell him and when my family found out they kicked me out and I travelled through post-war Europe with my baby looking for his family who took me in and loved me. And possibly, in the end, it turned out that he wasn't actually dead and we got married and lived happily ever after.

Everyone liked Anton Broomsticks. I can well understand your sequel storyline.

Wow Broomstick! I had something similar . Every time I read it, I willed him not to get killed.

Wasn't the collaborator made into a TV drama passport? It rings a bell.

I can still remember Anton talking to Patty about fighting and how he was bored waiting to advance for 99% of the time and absolutely petrified the times he had to fight. I think it rang true with real life accounts of ww1 and ww3 I'd read.

I have this and the sequel in my kindle for the last 6 months and I'm afraid to read them in case as I'm sorely disappointed as an adult!

Also on my to-reread list is the 'Across The Barricades' books about the teenage couple during the troubles in Belfast.

I never really enjoyed the Kevin and Sadie books that much, probably because I grew up in Belfast during the Troubles, but in a very middle-class mixed area, so while it was nice to read about the places I was familiar with, it also felt like reading about stuff that was supposed to be exotic but wasn't.

It's great to realise other people have a soft spot for this book!

I will look up 'Across The Barricades' up Hugh. Love a star-crossed lovers tale. It all goes back to Romeo and Juliet I suppose...

Another book I reread recently was 'The Fog Line' but that wasn't strictly a YA novel. It was unrelentingly depressing, I have to say!

I absolutely loved this as a teenager and have re-read it quite a few times as an adult and still love it! However, I'm currently halfway through the sequel and I'm just not feeling it in the same way. Disappointing. I think it's the lack of Anton!

I have a book called 'Goodbye Summer' that I stole from the school library in 1986. I read it every once in a while and it's still perfect.

I think I might have stolen Pennington's Seventeenth Summer from the school library.

Is the sequel to this one where she's on a cruise ship and feels sick before dinner but acts all.poised and can't believe people actually like her, and she's in Germany and wildly over tips because she's not used to spending Marks?

I've never read it but I do remember seeing the made-for-TV film of it in the States, which was quite good as I recall.