NOMINATED FOR 2015 CARNEGIE MEDAL
A Young Adult novel set in South Africa.
Young Erin Dearlove has lost everything in a violent attack on her family. She now lives with her bohemian aunt Kate in a run-down apartment block. Locked into a fantasy of her previous life, she shuns all overtures of friendship from her new neighbours, until she meets Mr Devilskein, the demon who lives on the top floor... and opens a door into another world.

Just as Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book reworked Kipling’s The Jungle Book for a modern audience with a liking for the supernatural, Devilskein & Dearlove is a darker, more edgy, contemporary reworking of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic The Secret Garden. An orphaned teenager is taken in by a reluctant distant relative, and in her new home makes an unexpected friend and finds a secret realm. It has shades of the quirky fantastical in the style of Miyazaki’s (Studio Ghibli) animated films like Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle (originally a novel by Diana Wynne Jones).
Alex says “As a child The Secret Garden was one of my first favourite novels - one of the first I relished reading by myself. Although Devilskein & Dearlove is very different, it was inspired by that novel and its themes.”

“Alex Smith’s quirky imagination knows no bounds.” - André Brink