Tell me what you can't forget,and I'll tell you who you are . . .

Cat is fifteen and the lonely new girl in town. Until she meets her neighbour, the manic, beautiful, pill-popping Marlena. Cat is quickly lured into Marlena's roller-coaster orbit by little more than an arched eyebrow and a shake of white-blonde hair. Within one intense, obsessive year of friendship, Marlena is dead, drowned in six inches of icy water in the woods nearby.

Decades later, when a ghost from that pivotal year surfaces unexpectedly, Cat must try again to move on, even as the memory of Marlena calls her back.

Marlena is a riveting, intelligent and brilliant novel from debut author Julie Buntin.

'If you loved The Girls, this is for you . . . totally addictive' Grazia