Jane Westaway — Love and Other Excuses

Longacre Press 1999 Paperback, 212pp. I knew at that moment that Tom Brannigan would stay a secret. That there were only finite amounts of love and happiness in the world, and that one person's joy was automatically another's misery, one person's love another's loss. It was simple as a primary school sum. Love. It seems to Zoe that people use that word to excuse the inexcusable. Like her mother. Like her friends. As if they have no choice, no control over themselves. Well, not her. And then she meets Tom. Intense, exciting and scaring her half to death. Love, when it comes, is nothing like what she expected. Tanning. (ISBN: 9781877135286). Good.