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I am not who I say I am,
and Marla isn't who she thinks she is.
I am a girl trying to forget.
She is a woman trying to remember.
Allison has run away from home and with nowhere to live finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there – and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past named Toffee.
Allison is used to hiding who she really is, and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be.
But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who is she, really?
"Two unlikely but resilient friends yearn to know who they really are in this sensitively told novel in verse...Crossan's finessed portrayal of Allison palpably exposes, by turn, her selfishness, compassion, and longing to be loved, while the haunting narration pulls the reader into Allison's thoughts and memories as she learns to cast off the invisibility she has used to protect herself." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Although the spare format forces readers to fill in gaps, it also renders lovely imagery...An uncommon, successful approach to a tough topic." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"An emotional verse novel that addresses domestic violence, teen homelessness, and intergenerational friendship." - School Library Journal
This information about Being Toffee was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Sarah Crossan has lived in Dublin, London and New York, and now lives in Brighton. She graduated with a degree in philosophy and literature before training as an English and drama teacher at Cambridge University. Sarah has won many international awards for her verse novels, including the CILIP Carnegie Medal, the CBI Book of Year award and the CLiPPA Poetry Award. This is her first novel for adults.
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