The Colour of Hope

by Susan Madison.

(Corgi, £5.99)

Ruth Carter had a fear of the water; convinced that she would die by drowning at sea. She could actually trace this fear right back to her childhood; and so her children were encouraged to embrace water.

Swimming, sailing and the beach were essential to Will and Josie, and summers spent in the family home on the coast of Maine paramount.

Will insists that his 14th birthday should be spent sailing, and although a reluctant participant, Ruth agrees.

Reluctance is also engendered in Josie.

Feeling herself too old to go out with her younger brother, she is belligerent and unkind. Her belligerence was born of being a 16-year-old inside a woman's body.

Ruth Carter feared death by drowning; but it wasn't to be her own death, but that of her daughter.

Ruth's despair, and her husband Paul's grief overwhelm the family, and Will's sudden illness seems to be the last straw.

The only thing that gives them respite is hope.

A beautifully descriptive prose is let down by an almost impossibly unbelievable story.

However, there is a market for books with a theme of hope against all odds, and I am not one to decry them.

If you enjoy this kind of novel get your box of tissues at the ready - you will need them.

Annie Dendy